Along Came The SPIDER
by Arctimon
Summary: When a new prospective student comes to visit SFIT, Hiro will be in for the shock of his life. He'll have to deal with not only a brand villain in town, but also the fact that he's not the only genius in the family. One crazy adventure awaits as Big Hero 6 join forces with the one and only Peni Parker to save the day! The super-sized finale, The Web We Weave, is now up!
1. Prologue - A Common Thread

_**Disclaimer: **I do not own Big Hero 6: The Series. It is owned by Disney Animation. I also don't own the three cameos appearing in here, although you can probably guess who does._

* * *

_**Prologue – A Common Thread**_

It was a wonderful afternoon in San Fransokyo. The sun was shining, not a cloud was in the sky. She could see the students make their way out the front archway, ready to make the trip back to their houses.

Oh, how she could wish she was one of those people. Too bad she was the dean.

Grace Granville turned away from the windows. Such was the life of a person in an administrative role such as hers.

She grasped the large mailing envelope in her hands. Contained inside was some very valuable information that couldn't wait. Part of the job was using said information to look for prospective students to enroll into the university, and tonight was no different.

Granville cut it apart with her letter opener, bringing out the two smaller manila envelopes. She was just about to untwirl the twine on the first one when her laptop started to ring.

She raised her eyebrow at the screen. Her laptop? Who would be calling her at this time of day?

One click on her keyboard brought up the chat window, and another office came into view. A long wooden desk very similar to hers extended into the background, and a giant portrait was on the wall behind it.

In front of it was a young man, looking straight ahead as he appeared to be moving some things around in the air with his hands. His brown hair was thick and puffed up, a couple of strands hanging over his forehead. His eyes kept rapidly moving back and forth, as if he was trying to take all of the information in.

Granville waited a moment, amused. She knew who the person was, but it looked like he didn't realize that she was watching him. Time to change that.

"Ahem."

The man jumped out of his seat, wildly looking around before setting his gaze on the window. _"Oh geez! Professor Granville! I didn't see you there."_

"Hello, Professor Deol. Perhaps it would have been wiser for me to announce myself so that I didn't scare you."

"_Not a problem."_ He poked a little bit at his desk. _ "I'm still trying to get everything in my desk sorted out and I must've called you by accident."_

"How _is_ that coming along?"

"_See for yourself."_ He pushed the window up, and Granville now saw an overhead view of his desk. It looked completely empty, but with one swipe, it projected a myriad amount of windows and his keyboard. _"I have everything I need in this sucker. I think I have more technology stuffed in this desk than half of the labs on this campus."_

Granville looked down at her laptop. "I prefer to be a little old-fashioned. I guess that comes with the absence of youth."

"_You are not that old, Grace."_

"Flattery will get you nowhere, Dinesh."

"_It got me __**here**__."_

"Yes, I suppose that's true." Granville grabbed one of the manila envelopes and continued to open it. "How is your first semester as the dean of the Neo York Institute of Technology going?"

The man rubbed the bridge of his nose, her view now coming down to rest in front of him. _"Ugh. Things have changed so much since I graduated from here five years ago. A lot of turnover. The board is already been breathing down my neck about recruitment, and it has not even been three months."  
_

"What did you tell them?"

"_To shove it. Professionally, of course."_

Granville finished with her folders, all of the papers now spread out on her desk. She was waiting for his next sentence to come out.

"_Now that I have you on the phone..."  
_

Yup. There it was.

"_I wanted to talk to you about something."_

"So you _did_ mean to call me."

Professor Deol grinned sheepishly. _"I did not know if you had already left for the day. I also...have heard things about you."  
_

"Oh? Have your board of directors been talking about me again?"

"_I try to not listen to them when it comes to personal opinions. John did speak very highly of you before he departed."_

Granville looked at him again. "Then speak your mind, Dinesh. If you have something to say, then say it."

He widened the window with his hands, and Granville saw his hands for the first time. Even though they hadn't met person-to-person, he had heard a lot about him: an engineer specializing in prosthetics, a former security head at one of the islands off the coast of Neo York, and a very intelligent individual for someone so young.

All of that was impressive on its own, but he also built his own artificial appendages from scratch after a freak accident caused him to lose both of his hands. Everything from his wrists up were made of metal, shining from the lights above. They were also technologically advanced, with the ability to interact with a lot of the current technology his institute worked with.

Hence the desk.

"_I am assuming you have heard about the two visiting us today."_

Granville glanced down at the papers on her desk. "I'm not quite sure what you're referencing, Professor."

"_Grace, I'm not dumb. I know that someone on your board called someone on my board; they mentioned it in our conference call yesterday. And you reached out to their high school for their academic profiles."_

He glanced down at one of the far corners of his desk. _"...And you also literally sent me an e-mail today asking about them."_

"Professor Deol, I assure you that I am not attempting to poach your students. That would require you to actually have these students under your direction to begin with."

The man on her screen grinned. _"Grace, are you spying on me?"_

"I'm not, but if you're offering..."

_"I was not."_

Granville watched as he threw up another window, this one littered with a bunch of graphs and charts. _"Since I know you are going to ask, their visit to campus was very promising. They are two of the brightest high school students in the entire country. Their current curriculum lags far behind what we can offer them here at NYIT."_

She grabbed two of the papers from her desk, taking a glance at both of them. "We can offer them that as well, as you know."

"_Grace."_ The young man leaned toward the screen, an amused eyebrow raised. _"Is one teen genius not enough for your school? Can you not leave some for the rest of us? I may have only been in this position for a little bit, but John told me a lot of things about you before he left to join his dad at the paper. One of those things is that you are very... persuasive."  
_

"Yes, I do have that particular gift. You can blame my mother for that."

"_Grace, I did read your e-mail before I called," _Deol said. _"I am not against them exploring their options for higher education. I just want it to be **their** decision, you know? They both have had it rough. Part of the same program. One of them has been in foster care all their life. The other has been living with her aunt and uncle since her parents died at age 9. I'm worried about what a cross-country move would do to them. They **are** still kids, after all."_

Granville put the papers down, thinking hard.

"_I am sorry about your student's departure from your school. I truly am."_

She narrowed her eyes, the frown apparent even to him.

"_I know that you have not made a lot of the details public, and that is understandable. It is always difficult to lose someone so gifted, for whatever reason. But you do not have to immediately replace them. Especially because you seem to think that their departure is going to be temporary at best."_

Granville didn't answer immediately, instead swiveling her chair back towards the open window.

"_Grace."_ His tone was softer, even a little pleading. _"I really like these kids. They are a good fit. I believe we can give them the education they so desperately crave. I mean no offense to your institute, but they belong here."_

"Well, you said it yourself, Dinesh..."

She crossed her arms over her body, brow furrowed.

"Why don't we let them decide?"

Granville turned her attention back to her NYIT counterpart. "Let me fly them out here, on my own dime. No expense to you. Give them a few days to see what we can offer them, and what they can offer us. Both of our schools would be better with their addition to our ranks. Maybe they'll even find something in the city to enjoy."

"_I've seen what's been happening over there, Grace. Glob monsters? Growing plant creatures? Secret cloning experiments from shady corporations? Your city **does** offer a lot; I just do not know if it's all appropriate."  
_

"Ahh, I thought you didn't read his paper. Was I wrong?"

Professor Deol rolled his eyes. _"Believe it or not, **that** is one of the reasons why John left. To reel in his dad a little bit. Although I am not sure how much that will do."_

Granville shook her head. "All I am asking for is a little patience. As someone who has dealt with criminals in your previous job on the island, you have that in spades. That's also quite similar to what you're doing now. Minding the asylum, if you will."

His eyes widened, the sudden realization hitting him. _"Oh dear. They __**are**__ eerily similar, are they not?_

"How about also building two highly-advanced artificial appendages by yourself? That also requires a lot of patience...and clever workmanship."

Deol tilted his head, bringing his hand up to the screen. The metal glowed a soft green, still connected to the technology in his desk and office. _"Grace, it is quite scary how much you have learned about me in only a few months."_

She smiled at him through the camera. "I do appreciate your understanding of wanting to be...off the grid, so to speak. But you're in the limelight now, Dinesh. People like us can't stay in the shadows anymore. We're here to teach the next generation, whoever that may be."

He made a motion to answer, but a noise came from the background, and he looked up to see who it was. Granville looked away out of courtesy, instead choosing to delve further into the files on her desk. A profile picture was in each, along with their complete academic career. The young girl on the left had dark skin, stylized gray hair, and brown eyes. She had an interest in computer science, having written her own code for hacking and viruses.

The other girl's unkempt black hair matched the school uniform at the bottom of the frame. The white hairclip kept it out of her eyes, a small arachnid icon over the top of it. Her desired major was also something all too familiar to her.

"_My apologies, Grace..."_

She looked up to see the headmaster's attention back on her. _"I must depart. It appears that some of my students have laid waste to their shared lab. Again."_ He sighed, his hand on his face. "_Please tell me it gets easier with time."  
_

Granville only smiled, her finger hovering over the keyboard. "_Namaste, _Professor Deol."

As she closed her laptop, she focused back on the briefs in front of her. Two great students.

Er..._prospective_ students.

She looked at the file on her left.

_**Name: Adeline Brock  
**__**Referred As: Addy  
**__**Interests: Cybersecurity, computer science  
**__**Known Relatives: N/A**_

And then the one on the right.

_**Name: Penelope Parker  
Referred As: Peni  
**__**Interests: Robotics, Artificial Intelligence  
**__**Known Relatives:  
**__**1.) Benjamin Parker**_

She looked a little closer.

"Well...this should be an interesting visit."

_**2.) May Parker, **__**née**_ _**Hamada**_

* * *

**AUTHOR'S NOTE: **That's right, ladies and gentlemen. Give a warm welcome to the newest member to the Big Hero 6 universe...Miss Peni Parker, cousin to the one and only Hiro Hamada. Building giant robots with red armor runs in the family, I guess.

The intention was always to add one of the Spiders to the BH6-verse, but I didn't want to just throw Peter in there, or one of the more well-known ones (Miles, Gwen). And then I watched Into The Spider Verse, and saw Peni, and immediately knew who I was going with.

This fic is going to have quite a few cameos in it, some of which you may recognize. John (the previous dean of NYIT) and his father, for example. Dinesh Deol as well isn't a random name; he corresponds to someone in the actual Marvel Universe. I would encourage you to go look him up.

Now, I'm not going to lie; I'm actually a little scared (but very excited) to write her here. Her personality will be an attempt at a mix between her comic portrayal and the movie's. Exactly how much of a mix it will be will be made clear soon enough. And it's not like I'm putting an unknown character into here like Aspen. She's gained in popularity since the movie, and the fact she's a Spider is only going to complicate things.

Even though this does take place after "City of Monsters", Karmi will be appearing in this story, albeit a little different than what I imagined before. Still have to have a little bit of Hiro/Karmi thrown into the mix.

I don't want to give too much away, but I can't wait for you guys to read this story. I hope you come along with me for the ride.

Read and review, if you like. Until next time.


	2. Recluse

_**Disclaimer:** Big Hero 6 is owned by Disney Animation. I also don't own any spiders._

* * *

_**Chapter 1 – Recluse**_

Hiro typed away at his laptop, studying over numbers while Baymax stood behind him.

Go Go took a wrench to her bike, tightening every single nut on her bicycle.

Honey Lemon had an eyedropper between her fingers, measuring the exact amount of hydrochloric acid she needed for her solution.

Wasabi pushed his flat head screwdriver right into its slot, the rest of his toolbox now finished and immaculate.

Even Fred was staring intently at his newest comic book, jotting down a note every once in a while in a spare notepad.

It wasn't every day that you could see every single member of Big Hero 6 with their heads down, busy with their individual projects.

Or really any day, if you asked Professor Granville.

But ever since their self-exile from superheroing (due to Chief Cruz branding them as fugitives), they had found that their schoolwork had been lagging behind their usual norms. So, even though they didn't want to, they had to cut back on their patrols in order to focus on their studies.

For Hiro, it gave him the opportunity to distract himself from everything that had been happening over the past few weeks. The demise of Sycorax, the arrest of the fake Liv Amara, the rescue of the real Liv Amara.

And also focus on...other things.

Hiro looked down at his task-bar, wanting the red circle indicating an incoming message to appear. Karmi was off on a family trip overseas, no longer enrolled in SFIT after her parents pulled her out. He had been able to get back in contact with her after a little while, but the twelve hour time difference really only meant they could talk at their respective middays.

But they, being the geniuses that they were, somehow made it work. They had been able to maintain a steady stream of communication, sometimes sitting down for a video chat right before he went to bed. Karmi's internet wasn't really the best, so they couldn't do this every night, but it was often enough where he was happy to see her face every time.

The others would pop in and say hi from time to time if they were around, but that was only at school; it would be awkward if one of them appeared in his bedroom when they talked late at night.

Especially because of the conversations that happened at said time.

Hiro smiled to himself. The talks that happened then benefited from his aunt being a sound sleeper and her family leaving her alone in the household to relax without any outside interference. Those two factors led to some...interesting subjects to discuss.

_Not anything dirty._ Get your mind out of the gutter. It was mostly Karmi trying to teach him some common phrases in Urdu, him using a lot more phlegm than needed, and her figuratively smacking him upside his head.

But there were other things. Other things that he wasn't too eager on telling his friends about.

"What're you smiling at over there?"

Hiro dropped his grin, if only to avoid Go Go's teasing. The friendship with Karmi was beginning to blossom into something genuine. Not that it wasn't something before, but after everything they (and she) had gone through, it was nice to just see her relaxed and calm. It made him that way too.

Not to mention it helped with _his_ sleep as well.

There was, however, one subject that he was afraid to bring up: her possible return. After asking her once and seeing her demeanor about it, he made it a point to not ask her again. He would know the answer when she did, and all he could do was hope that it was the right one.

"That must be one heck of a motion equation you have there."

Hiro realized too late that Go Go was standing next to him. She bent down to look at his screen. "You figure everything out?"

"Umm, yeah." He minimized the window quickly. "It's good."

"_Hiro's vector coordinates are aligned with the velocity and acceleration of his desired outcome."_

"Oh yeah...that's _totally_ what you were doing." Go Go threw her arm out. "I'm surprised you can concentrate with all of this noise."

Hiro gazed around the rest of the workspace. The gang apparently was not the only ones who were playing catch-up; it seemed like the entirety of the student body had forgotten they needed to work on projects as well. He couldn't remember the last time there were so many people in the lab.

Honey Lemon peeled off her gloves and carefully put her solution into the small freezer. "I'm done now. Just need this to set to the proper temperature, and it should be good to go."

"What're you making over there, Honey Lemon?" Wasabi asked.

"Aqua regia."

"Umm...then why are you chilling it? Shouldn't you be using it?"

"Well, that's part of the project I'm doing," she replied as she shut the door. "I want to see if I can slow its decomposition to the point where it would be ready for use without having to keep its components separate." She pulled her goggles up and hung them on a hook next to her lab coat. "That, and my grandmother just sent me some old glassware she wanted me to restore."

"What kind?"

"The kind you hold your pinkie out while drinking," Go Go said from next to Hiro. "I saw the box it came in. You're lucky none of it came broken."

"She just wants it shiny. We'll send it back in something more sturdy; do you think you can swing by the post office and grab some packing material?"

The Korean rolled her eyes. "When did I become Honey Lemon's errand girl?" she mumbled.

"When she started living with you," Wasabi smirked.

"Well, I'm ready for lunch. I'm starving." Hiro shut his laptop. It didn't look like he was going to get anything from Karmi now. Maybe he'd try tonight, providing he got done with all of his work.

And Aunt Cass didn't spring any surprises on him.

"Yeah, I'm down, too." Wasabi stepped from out of his work station. "You coming, Fred?"

"...Is this what we've reduced ourselves to?"

The four humans and one robot looked at each other, confused. _"I do not understand."_

"Since when have the members of Big Hero 6 become so boring? We should be out looking for adventure and action! Not staying here all day and doing _boring_ work."

"You know you're including yourself in that, right?"

"We're overdue for something exciting to happen! In fact, I'm going to make a prediction!" He got up from his chair, the comic book falling to the floor. "There's going to be excitement coming through that door right...now!"

Fred wildly pointed his finger at the entrance, which remained eerily silent under their gaze.

"Yeah..._I've _had enough excitement this semester for one lifetime," Go Go said. "As much as I love being hunted by the police, it's been nice to catch up on school stuff. It wasn't that long ago that we were dealing with the likes of Sycorax and Fathom. Can't you just enjoy your stupid little comics for one day without wanting us to fight monsters or drown in the ocean or anything else like that? Isn't there another hobby that you can take up in the meantime?"

"I am so glad you brought that up!" Fred wheeled around and reached into the crevice of his chair. He yanked out something cylindrical and metal; it was an old flute, a few puffs of the chair cushion sticking off of it. "I've been learning to play an instrument! Wanna hear what I've got down so far?"

"Not particularly."

"Wasabi, count me down!"

"Nope."

"Baymax, count me down!"

"_I have been instructed by Go Go not to do so."_

"Aww, you guys are no fun!" Fred turned so his left side was facing his friends. "Let me play you the song of my people!" He took a deep breath in and put his lips to the head joint, ready to play the song of his people...whatever that meant.

But no sound came out.

"Mr. Frederickson."

The group looked up to see Professor Granville standing to his right, her palm flat against the foot joint. She bent down a bit, smiling.

"Unless you plan on leading the rats out of the city of Hamelin, I would suggest you keep your serenade in the confines of your home."

She held out her hand, which was instantly filled will a dollop of Wasabi's hand sanitizer. "Thank you, Mr. Calloway." She rubbed her palms together. "How is everyone doing this afternoon? Hard at work, I presume?"

"Professor, you're not here to surprise us with another corporation that needs our help, are you?" Honey Lemon asked.

"I am not."

"Want two of us to team up on another project?" Wasabi said, standing next to Hiro.

"That won't be necessary."

"Here to take some of our armor and parade around the city again?" Hiro smirked.

Granville was finished with her cleansing, bringing her arms down to her sides. "It's actually quite humorous that you think that every time I show up, you expect something bad to happen or be announced."

Go Go crossed her arms. "That's because you usually do."

The dean said nothing else...to just them.

"May I have everyone's attention, please?"

The rest of the lab fell silent as Granville raised her voice for everyone to hear. "Tomorrow, we will be having two very special guests visiting our campus. I will be personally showing them around SFIT for the majority of the week. Without disclosing _too_ much information, they have the potential to join the ranks of our student class. As such, I expect that you will welcome them with open arms...and treat them with the same respect that you would give any visitor of our fine institute."

Granville gave the tiniest of glances at Hiro before continuing. "As such, my Thermodynamics class for this week has been canceled. Feel free to use the extra time to work on your personal projects. Or, in the case of Mr. Frederickson...find a plentiful amount of vermin to chase away."

She walked over to the double doors and turned around, waving both of her arms forward. "As you were."

The noise in the lab started to pick back up, but in hushed whispers between the other students. Wasabi put a finger to his thumb, thinking hard. "That's weird. Orientations don't start until July. Why bring people in now?"

"Must be a special exception," Honey Lemon replied. "Bring them in, get them accustomed to the campus. If they accept, they can get started early in the summer and fully enroll in the fall."

"Yeah, but only two people?" Go Go questioned. "They must be _really_ smart. Like smarter than Hiro."

Silence.

"See, this is the part where you jump in and say no one is smarter than you."

Hiro didn't respond, instead still staring at the doors Granville had left in. His brain was thinking about something, which didn't leave any room to retort to his classmate's statement.

"Hiro?"

The teen genius started walking out of the lab. "I'll meet you guys in the cafeteria. I have to do something first."

The four turned to Baymax, who only blinked in response. _"I am a healthcare robot, not a mental telepathist."_

* * *

Hiro turned the corner, hoping that Granville was going back to her office. It was a sign that he already knew the way back to her room by heart, but it wasn't one he was trying to think about right now.

He turned down the short hallway, and there she was, just about to enter the door. "Professor Granville!"

She looked up, eyes widened. "Mr. Hamada. I already know what you're going to ask, and no. I will not tell you who is coming tomorrow."

"What? No, that's...not what I was going to ask." He stopped to catch his breath. "I wanted to talk to you about something. In private."

"...To think of the day you would be actively seeking me out." Granville opened the door, amused. "Come in, please."

The two walked in, the dean taking her place behind the desk. Hiro stood in front, bent slightly down to fill his oxygen reserve.

"So, what is it you wish to talk to me about?"

Hiro straightened up, his breathing now back to normal. "I wanted to know if you've heard anything about Karmi."

She stared him down for a moment, not leaving his gaze. "Ahh. I was wondering who was putting up 'Under Construction' tape in front of the lab doorway. I am going to assume that was you?"

"I...don't know...what you're talking about?"

"Mr. Hamada, you may have been able to fool the custodial staff, but any place that's blocked off for more than a couple of days is going to get my attention."

"But you haven't removed it yet. You haven't put another student in it."

Granville continued to stare at him. "I have not placed anyone in there because there is no one to place in that lab. When I have a student available, they will go in it."

"But-"

She put a hand up, stopping his sentence. "Mr. Hamada, I may have been born in the evening, much to the chagrin of my beloved mother, but it was most definitely_ not_ last evening. I know what is going on here."

Hiro hung his head. "I just...I wish she was back."

Granville didn't say anything, instead shuffling some papers in front of her. Hiro figured he might as well take the full dive in instead of tiptoeing around the issue.

"Have you talked to her at all?"

She let out a sigh through her nose. "Mr. Hamada, I would like to remind you that conversations between students and myself are confidential."

"But she's not your student...anymore. So wouldn't any conversations that you had with her after she left not fall under the confidentiality rule?"

Now it was almost comical the amount of time she was gazing at him. She set her pile down on her desk, all the while not looking away.

"I have spoken to Karmi only twice."

Hiro's ears perked up.

"The first time, as Karmi undoubtedly told you about, was when I called her parents right after her departure from the school. That conversation was a long one, but one-sided. I actually know both her father and mother a little bit, and I thought I could convince them to stay at least temporarily. I was incorrect."

She tapped the top of the pile absentmindedly. "The second time was approximately two weeks ago. I had called Karmi personally to see how she was faring, but I was not informed that she had traveled out of the country to see her family. Imagine my surprise when she told me it was four in the morning over in her neck of the woods," she added, chuckling.

"We talked very briefly that time, given the circumstances. She didn't provide me with an update, and I did not inquire further. She told me that I would be the second person to be informed when her decision was made."

Hiro was confused. "Second? Who was the first?"

Granville tilted her head at him.

"...Oh."

She continued to smile as she pushed her papers to the side. "She wanted to make very clear to me that she misses everyone here dearly, including this 'Genius Boy' that she talked about. I wonder who that could be?"

Granville opened her laptop as Hiro's face started to redden. "Mr. Hamada, I am glad that the two of you are maintaining constant communication. That is something I believe she needs right now, so I would advise continuing to do that. However, I would implore you not to pester her about her possible return. This is something that, as much as both you and I wish to help, is not in our control. We both have other matters to attend to in the meantime. You with your projects..."

She poked the screen of her computer. "And me with our imminent guests. So, unless you have other things you wished to discuss that do not involve Karmi, I am going to kindly ask you to vacate my office. You probably want to join your friends for lunch."

Hiro turned to walk out the door, but stopped halfway through. He raised a finger at his teacher…

"No, Mr. Hamada, I am still not telling you who is coming."

He lowered it, disappointed.

"However..."

Granville gazed at him over her joined hands. "Perhaps you would like to join us for part of their introduction to the institute."

"Me?"

"No, the other person that is in the room with us."

Hiro quickly looked around, but just as quickly got the joke.

"I was thinking that your history with SFIT and the personal challenges you've had in your first year will prove beneficial to two people who haven't experienced the rigors of a college campus before."

"Wouldn't it be better for someone else to do it? Someone a little older?"

"Perhaps." She typed away at her keyboard. "But I think your unique experience may prove relatable for these particular people."

Hiro wasn't sure that he liked how that sentence sounded. "I hope you're talking about school and not all of the...other things."

"I am."

"...Sure. Why not?"

"You don't have to sound so defeated about it, Mr. Hamada. I was merely offering, but if you don't want to be relieved of going to your other classes, I suppose I cannot force you."

He shook her head slightly at her, grinning. "Now who's blackmailing who?"

"Certainly not myself, if that is what you are insinuating."

Hiro shrugged. She sure knew how to make a case for anything. "I'll do it."

"Excellent." Granville's fingers dashed along the keyboard. "I believe you only have one other class tomorrow other than myself. I will send notice to your teacher of the circumstances."

He grabbed the knob on the door. "Is there anything else you want to spring on me, Professor?"

"I believe that will be all for today."

"Today?"

"Well, tomorrow is a brand new day. Who knows what will happen then?"

Hiro really hated it when she was being cryptic. But he didn't have any additional time to think about it, as Granville waved her hand at him. "I shall come meet you tomorrow when we are ready to pick you up. If I do not see you before then, Mr. Hamada, enjoy the rest of your day."

He opened the door…

"And do say hello to Karmi for me when you talk to her again."

Hiro shut the door behind him, glad that she could no longer see his blush.

* * *

_Dinner time, at the closed Lucky Cat Cafe..._

"So you'll be playing guide with Granville tomorrow?"

"It might be more than tomorrow. Not sure yet." Hiro twirled some more noodles into his fork. "But she said something about 'my unique experiences' being helpful or whatever."

Aunt Cass scoffed at him. "Well, you _are_ unique. You're the youngest student at school. I'm sure there's a lot that these two can learn from you."

"Yeah. Like how to _not_ show up to class on time."

Hiro glared at Go Go. "Why are you even here?"

The Korean motioned around the table to the rest of the group. "Because Aunt Cass invited us all over for dinner to try out her new spaghetti sauce recipe. And I'm super hungry."

Honey Lemon grinned sheepishly at Hiro. "And we really haven't gone grocery shopping in a while, so we have no food in the apartment."

"I also don't have food, so I went to my super secret emergency reserves hidden in my pantry," Wasabi said. "And it turns out someone raided it before they left. Not to mention any _names_."

"Wasabi, the top shelf of a pantry is not hidden."

"To someone of Aspen's height, it is."

"Oooh!" Aunt Cass reached for another piece of garlic bread. "Who's Aspen?" Seeing Fred's hand shoot up, she pointed over at him. "Yes, you in the back?"

"It's his girlfriend!"

She curled her fingers toward Wasabi. "Gimme a picture. Now."

Sighing, he gave his phone to Aunt Cass, who gazed at the photo on the screen. "Oh my gosh! She is so pretty! And I _love_ that hair! Does she dye it? I _have _to know!"

Wasabi glanced at Hiro through his fingers, the sounds of the girls' laughter filling the cafe. "Can't we talk about Hiro and Karmi?"

"Oh, I can bother him about that at any point in time. But this is new! Where did you guys meet?"

He dabbed the corners of his mouth with a napkin, seemingly resigned to his fate. "At work."

"...Go onnnn."

Hiro hid his smile behind his fork. It was actually nice to have everyone over for dinner, especially that he wasn't the subject of the interrogation this time. Aunt Cass had to pull two of the round tables together, but everyone was comfortable and getting fed.

And now apparently grilling Wasabi for information.

"_Aspen is currently traveling __around in her personal submarine, in search of something that has not been discussed to us."  
_

"A mystery! I like this girl even better!" Aunt Cass giggled. "Soooo, when am I going to meet her?"

Aunt Cass's cell rang from her pocket, saving Wasabi from further questioning. She glanced down at her phone. "You're lucky I have to take this, Wasabi. We'll get back to you later." She got up from her chair, walking a little bit away. "Hey, girl! What're you calling for so late?"

"Girl?" Go Go was instantly interested. "Who is she talking to?"

"I would assume a girl."

"Thank you, Knucklehead, for your insight."

Aunt Cass walked back over temporarily, grabbing her glass of water. "And that's why I'm staying in San Fransokyo, May. You know I can't handle anything under fifty degrees. I'd freeze to death." She strode off to the back room, away from the group.

"May?" Wasabi turned to Hiro. "Who's May?"

"...My aunt."

Hiro saw that everyone was staring at him. "My..._other _aunt. She lives in Neo York with her husband Ben."

"Oooh! I think I remember her!" Honey Lemon exclaimed. "Tall woman, big puffy brown hair?" Seeing Hiro's nod, her eyes widened. "Yeah, I definitely remember her. I talked to her at Tadashi's funeral. What does she do over in Neo York?"

"I don't actually know. She used to come visit us every year, but that was the first time she had come in..." Hiro counted mentally. "Five years? Four? It had been a while." He smiled as he picked up the last of his spaghetti. "She used to sneak me gummy bears whenever she came over. Drove Aunt Cass mad."

"Oh, so _that's_ where your crippling addiction of gummy bears comes from," Fred said.

"It's not an addiction! I can stop whenever I want. I just choose not to."

"May Riley Hamada!"

The group turned to see Cass in the doorway, her face getting angry at something her sister had said. After a moment, it contorted back into its regular expression. "Sorry, sorry. I forgot. You're married." She reared up again.

"_May Riley Parker! Tell me now!"_

She ducked back into the doorway, and Honey Lemon grabbed another piece of garlic bread. "Do you know why she stopped coming over?"

"Nope. I just always thought it was too far of a distance for her to travel consistently."

Baymax brought up a basic picture of the country, a plane going over it frame by frame. _"It takes approximately six and a half hours to fly from Neo York City to San Fransokyo, accumulating in four hours of total time zone difference."_

"That's amazing, May!"

Aunt Cass strode back into the cafe, her purse now underneath her arm. "I wish you would've told me sooner, but I'm heading out now. I'll let you know when I pick her up. Talk to you later!" She hung up as she started making her way outside.

"Umm...Aunt Cass? What's going on?"

She turned back to them, now excited again. "Oh, Hiro. This is so great! Your cousin is coming to visit!"

Hiro blinked. "My cousin?"

"Yes, Hiro. Your cousin." She threw her hand out, the palm hovering just above her waist. "You know. Little Peni."

He continued to give her a blank stare.

"You are such a terrible cousin, Hiro. Here, let me go jog your memory." She quickly went upstairs while the rest of the group watched her.

"Yeah, Hiro. How _dare_ you not know about the cousin you clearly had forgotten about."

Hiro glared at Go Go, but the feeling was short-lived; Aunt Cass had already come back down, a giant leather-bound book in her hands. In a huff, she threw it down onto the booth table and motioned to the gang. "Here, let me show you."

They got up from their chairs and looked down at the cover. It was scrawled with the Hamada family name on the front, and it looked very old. Aunt Cass flipped open the book and went a few pages in before stopping. "First of all, for those of you who don't know, this is my sister May." She pointed down to the page, where Hiro saw a group of three adults smiling for the camera. Cass was on the left, and May was on the right, her brown hair pulled up into a large lumpy bun. "Older sister by two years and high school tiddlywinks champion, but don't mention that to her or else she'll talk your ear off for hours about it."

There was a man in between them, his much darker hair spiked off to the right, his glasses just resting on the bridge of his nose. "Who's that?" Honey Lemon asked.

"That's Hiro's father. Always between the two of us, ol' Tommy-boy."

"He's so handsome!"

"Yeah, that's where Hiro gets his good looks from. And also his girl problems."

Hiro blushed as Cass continued on. "Peni is Hiro's cousin from my side of the family. I haven't seen her in a very long time, but I remember it like it was yesterday…"

She apparently had found the picture she was looking for, and she pointed down to it. It was an old photo of two babies, both in their diapers and sharing a crib. They couldn't have been more than three or four months old. Both of them had small tufts of black hair, and one had a small butterfly charm on top of their head. They were staring up at the camera with bright-eyed expressions. Hiro could hear Honey Lemon's squee from behind him start to ramp up in intensity.

"This was when Hiro's mom and Peni's mom brought them over to meet for the first time. They were actually born only a few days apart; I don't understand how they got that to work. But they sure did enjoy each other's company."

"Is that Hiro?" Wasabi asked, pointing at the baby on the left.

"Nah, that's Peni. Hiro's that one." She gestured to the one with the butterfly charm. "Maemi wanted Hiro to be able to express himself at a young age, and he did it in butterflies."

Five camera phone clicks went off simultaneously, and Hiro sighed. "Baymax, I don't understand why _you're_ taking a picture of it."

"_As a healthcare robot, it is imperative that I understand your medical history, up to and including your infantile years."_

"And it's _our_ job as your friends to embarrass you as much as we can," Go Go said, fiddling with her phone.

Aunt Cass flipped through a few more pages until Hiro heard his phone buzz from his pocket. He brought it up to his face to see that someone had texted him.

_OMG! I'm saving this forever!_

A certain fellow teen genius someone.

Hiro stared at Go Go, who merely shrugged her shoulders. "Oh, come on. She was going to find out eventually. I'm saving you future embarrassment."

Aunt Cass pointed to the next photo. It was three people, one of them towering over the other two. The boy in the back was holding up a peace sign, and the two in the front only had the top of their faces showing, the person on the left barely in frame. All three had jet black hair. "This was when you were...six, I wanna say? Poor Peni, she still hadn't gotten used to the idea of a camera."

It was true; Hiro saw the young girl practically staring a hole into the picture, her long bangs pulled back by a hair clip. "That's...not me, right?"

"Oh no. You had grown out of your accessories phase by then."

Wasabi let out a low whistle. "They look almost like twins."

"Yeah, that's the Hamada family tree for you. Good health, great brains...and no one knows how to use a comb." Aunt Cass clenched her fingers together. "Ooooh, I'm so excited to see her! I wonder what she's been up to after all this time. I actually have to go to the airport to get her; she's flying in right now. I really wish May told me about it earlier; I don't have anything ready for her." She turned to the rest of the group. "Honey Lemon, can you clear off the table when you guys are done eating? Don't worry about the dishes; just put them in the sink."

"Sure thing!"

"Wasabi and Fred, can you go with Hiro and make sure his room is clean? She'll have to go in Tadashi's bed for now. I hope she doesn't mind. But I have to get going!" Aunt Cass closed the book and set it in Hiro's arms, who almost fell to the floor under the weight. "Her plane's due to land in a little bit."

"I have a question."

Unlike everyone else, Go Go wasn't sharing their look of enthusiasm. Hiro wasn't sure why, but it became evidently clear in about two seconds.

"You said Peni's mom before."

"Yes?"

The Korean was staring at the closed book, her expression firm. "Not May."

"Correct."

"May's not her mom?"

Aunt Cass shuffled her purse to her other arm nervously. "No."

"So...she's adopted?"

"In a matter of speaking, yes."

Go Go's mouth thinned out. "What does _that _mean?"

"Look, honey." Aunt Cass had her hand on the door, ready to walk out. "It's a very...complicated situation. Even I don't know all of the details, and May has refused to tell me them. So when Peni comes, try not to bother her about it, OK?"

She walked out the door, the bell above the door chiming as it closed. The cafe was silent for a few seconds while the new information was being processed.

"_Finally!_ Excitement! Adventure! Mystery! This is what we've been waiting for!"

Hiro sighed for what seemed like the thousandth time, slapping his hand over his face. So much for no surprises.

* * *

_Later that night…_

Hiro nervously tapped his foot on the chair across from him. He was still in the cafe, but he was now alone. The rest of his friends had gone back to their places; Go Go had _wanted _to stay, but Honey Lemon mercifully dragged her out behind her.

The chores that Aunt Cass had bestowed upon them had been done, and Hiro had even done the dishes in his act of keeping himself occupied. But now there was nothing left to do but wait.

And wait.

And wait some more.

"_Hiro, it is natural to be nervous when meeting someone after a long period of time. Perhaps you should participate in some breathing exercises."  
_

"I'm fine, Baymax."

A pair of headlights ran over the far wall, and Baymax's head turned to look through the wall. _"Aunt Cass had returned."_

"How do I look?" Hiro ran a hand through his hair in an attempt to tame it.

"_You look like a fourteen-year-old boy."_

"No, that's not-"

The bell chimed again, and Aunt Cass walked through the door a violently bright pink rolling suitcase behind her. It was adorned with a gargantuan amount of stickers, the cuteness almost overbearing. "Well, this is it! Our little abode! Come on in; don't be shy."

A small girl walked in next, and Hiro looked her over. From his vantage point, he could tell she was just a tiny bit shorter than him, although the fluffy black hair made up for it. She was wearing a large black sweater, covering up the dress shirt and black tie underneath. Her pants were red, going down into her leather boots which clacked onto the hard floor as she came in.

She turned her head to take in her surroundings, and he saw a hair clip holding her hair out of her eyes, but it wasn't a normal one. It had eight lines poking out of the circle, four pointing up and four pointed downward, just like a spider. He could have sworn he saw it move against her bangs…

"Hiro, you can come closer. She doesn't bite."

He took a step forward, and her gaze fell upon him. She had the same colored eyes as both him and Tadashi, but there was a sharpness that was in there was slightly off-putting. Maybe the wide-eyed expression he saw in the photo never left.

"Peni..." Aunt Cass put her hands on the young girl's shoulders. "This is Hiro. Your cousin."

Hiro waved his hand nervously. "Hello."

Peni looked down at his shoes. "...'Lo."

Her voice was so soft he almost missed it, but he could tell she was nervous as well. Aunt Cass must have picked on it too, because she stepped in. "Sweetie, you can go upstairs to Hiro's bedroom. Your bed's in the corner. Just take them all the way up, OK? I'll be up in a minute."

Peni nodded, walking past Hiro. Her backpack, which he hadn't noticed before, took the form of a giant furry blue creature, its tongue serving as the clasp. She started the slow climb up the stairs, her head swiveling to take in everything.

Hiro found himself unconsciously following her, stopping at the landing near the front door. A slow tingling started to crawl throughout his body, almost like a sense of foreboding had come in from the outside with her.

"Yeah, May told me she's _very_ shy. She's also probably tired from the flight in. Give her a few minutes to get situated and let her get some sleep, OK? She's got a big day tomorrow!"

"Why?" Hiro tore his gaze away from upstairs to look at his aunt, who joined him near the door.

"Because I'm driving her to SFIT in the morning!"

His mind restarted as the puzzle pieces started to fit into place. "Wait. What?"

Granville's conversation...the visitors coming...the dean saying his situation was relatable to them…

Relatable...

The picture was finally complete as Hiro's eyes widened, her exclamation finishing what his brain had started.

"Hiro, Peni's going to school with you!"

* * *

**AUTHOR'S NOTE: **And there's the rub.

For anyone who may be confused by the family tree, I'll explain a little bit. May is both Hiro's and Peni's aunt, who is Cass's sister. Cass also has a brother (Tommy, or Toemi as he's known in the old school BH6 lore), who is Hiro's father and was married to Maemi.

Get it? Good. I should really make a family tree or something. Maybe that'll be my next little piece of art I do.

For those who are wondering what Peni's going to be like in this story, the aim is going to be a mix of both her comic portrayal and her character in _Into The Spider-Verse._ Exactly how much of each is the interesting part and also part of her struggle in this story.

The other thing people may be asking is this: when is the giant robot going to show up?

Next chapter. It'll be there. Don't you worry. It'll also have a couple of characters from her comic story and advance the plot a fair amount.

Chapter 2, **Peni In Your Thoughts?**, will be out next week. Read and review, if you like. Until next time.


	3. Peni In Your Thoughts?

_**Disclaimer: **Big Hero 6 is owned by Disney Animation. S.P.I.D.E.R.'s owned by Peni...maybe._

* * *

_**Chapter 2 – Peni In Your Thoughts?**_

It was one of those nights where he wished he could just go back to being a normal kid.

Ha ha. Joke's on him. He never was a normal kid. The vast amount of knowledge swirling in his brain made sure of that.

Hiro was laying in his bed, staring straight up at his dragon. He didn't even know what time it was; he didn't have the energy to check his phone or raise his head to look beyond Baymax at the clock. The reason why he wasn't asleep was the person in the other bed.

Because for the second time in a very brief period, there was another human occupying his room.

"Aunt Cass might as well just run a bed and breakfast at this point," he muttered.

Peni was already asleep by the time Hiro had gotten upstairs, which was probably for the best. He had so many questions he wanted to ask her, and Aunt Cass wasn't providing many answers. All she would say was that she would be driving him and Peni straight to SFIT in the morning. She wouldn't given anything else up, but remembering Granville's words let him put two and two together.

His cousin was possibly going to school with him. He wasn't sure how to feel about that.

Back when Tadashi was alive, he would sometimes come home and talk to Aunt Cass about his classes. Hiro, being the teenager he was, took the time to fidget with his food and complain about eating vegetables, but every once in a while he would actually listen to what his brother was saying. The school had sounded interesting, but he always blew it off as him being a nerd.

But now that he almost had a full year of being an actual student of the San Fransokyo Institute of Technology, he couldn't imagine being anywhere else.

And if Peni, who was only a few days younger than him, was able to join, that would make her the youngest-

Hiro flopped onto his side. Maybe that's what was bothering him; as shallow as it was, he enjoyed holding the title of the youngest student ever to attend SFIT. He relished it. He would sometimes rub it in Karmi's face (the previous record holder) whenever he felt like annoying her.

But that was back then. Before he had gotten to know her. Before they shared a week together in his room.

And a bed…

Hiro sighed through his nose. It was actually a bit annoying that she was in his brain all the time. But he supposed that wasn't really different from when she was still at school.

However, Granville was right; there were other things he had to focus on. Getting derailed wasn't helping anybody, much less himself or Karmi. He just had to trudge through.

All of the surprises and sudden familial visits earlier had unfortunately put the thought of talking to Karmi out of his mind. Maybe he'd try calling her tomorrow.

Er.

Today.

What time was it?

Hiro reached out for his phone, but his fingers didn't hit it immediately. It hit something small and thin. Confused, he poked his finger out a little further.

And it started crawling up his hand.

He recoiled back, his arm slamming into the bed. What in the world was _that? _It had way too many legs for his liking. Did his room have an infestation or something?

"Your robot is interesting."

"Gah!"

Hiro shot up in bed, not expecting a voice to puncture the silence. He looked straight ahead and saw Peni was awake, and also standing right in front of a charging Baymax, staring him up and down. Her back was to him, the white t-shirt almost blending into his robot's body.

"Curious decision to use inflatable vinyl instead of an oxford cloth. Trade maneuverability for durability."

He wasn't sure why she was up, or why she was trying to have a conversation about Baymax's inner workings, but he suddenly remember why he had been startled to begin with. "Umm...have you felt any bugs in here?"

Peni turned her head to stare at him, the eyes just as wide as before. "Bugs?"

"Or a..." He mentally counted the number of legs he had felt. "A spider. Something like that."

She brought a finger up to her forehead, and Hiro thought she was trying to think, but a second later it went up to her clip. "Oh. I must have hit it by mistake. My apologies."

She pressed it down, and he saw something crawl over from near his computer. It _was_ a spider, but it didn't look like any one he had ever seen before.

It also wasn't a real spider, as he could now tell from the tiny noises made by the movements. It was a robot.

It crawled to her foot, going up her sweatpants until it hit her shoulder. It went around her neck and went back up to her bang, straightening its legs to resemble the full hair clip he had seen before.

"Wait. That's yours?"

Peni nodded. "Yes. It was one of the first prototypes I ever made. I was seven."

Hiro was shocked. "Wow. That's really impressive."

"Yes." She looked back at Baymax's head, staring at it closely. "It is."

This was weird. Her tone had not changed for the entire exchange; all of her words were slow and devoid of any emotion. Aunt Cass had mentioned that she was shy, but this was starting to border on creepy. It was almost like she herself was a robot.

Her turning back to the bed shook him out of his thoughts. "I apologize for waking you up. I will go back to bed."

"Wait..."

But she said nothing as she disappeared behind the separator and went back underneath the covers. By the time he could even think about speaking up again, she was already asleep.

Hiro sat there for a moment, unsure of what really just happened.

And then he flopped back down to the bed and went right to sleep.

* * *

_The next morning…_

Hiro walked into the Cafe with Baymax, a big yawn escaping from his mouth. A robot-bug scaring the living wits out of him notwithstanding, the night had been good for sleep. He woke up refreshed, his mind was clear, and he was ready for whatever surprises were going to get thrown at him.

"Morning," he said as he sat down at the table.

No one responded.

"...Hilarious, guys. The whole silent treatment may have worked on me when I was younger, but it won't now."

A hand came down upon his head and turned it around, his neck bending toward the booth. He saw Peni sitting with her back to the window, a bowl of cereal in front of her and a pair of headphones in her ears, her head bopping to the music. It was so loud that he could have probably heard it from the opposite end of the cafe.

"Your cousin is weird." The hand turned his head to stare at Go Go. "Is everyone is your family weird?"

"What?" Hiro couldn't believe it. "She wasn't doing this yesterday."

"Well, she's doing it now." She stabbed at her omelet with her fork. "Came downstairs before you, sat down at the table, and started eating. Didn't even speak to any of us. And now she's going to be deaf by tonight at that volume."

"Go Go, leave her alone. I'm sure she's just getting used to things her own way."

The Korean recoiled her head back. "Honey Lemon, that girl is so sheltered that if if started monsooning in here, the water would reflect back up into the sky. My dad's not even here to assist with the psychoanalysis and _I_ could tell you that from the ten minutes she's been down here. I bet Baymax has more emotion than she does."

"_And I do not have any emotions."_

"But she has good taste in music," Fred nodded. "Cartoon theme songs and all that."

"...I'm not even going to _begin_ to ask how you know that."

"Hiro!"

Aunt Cass came careening over to the table, a breakfast burrito in her hand. "This is for you. I couldn't make something more substantial, but we have to get going. I'll grab Peni; do you have everything for school?"

She walked off without hearing his answer, and now his friends' curiosity was piqued. "Aunt Cass is taking you to school?" Wasabi asked.

"Yeah...both of us."

"Both?"

Hiro glanced at Peni, who was now talking to Aunt Cass. That was all it took for everyone to get the hint.

"Wait." Go Go gestured at him with her fork. "_She's_ one of the guests that Granville's prancing about?"

"And is that why Aunt Cass wants me to cover the Cafe for a couple of hours? She's driving you two to school?"

"Yes."

"Gah!"

The sudden entrance of Peni causes the five of them to jump out of their seats. She had her backpack with her, her headphones hanging from her neck. Thankfully, the volume had been reduced, probably at the behest of Aunt Cass.

"I will be visiting SFIT to explore my options for further education," she monotoned.

"Oh. That's...lovely." Honey Lemon adjusted her crooked glasses. "What are you thinking about studying?"

"Robotics."

"Interesting." Fred picked up another pancake. "Someone else in your family is a robotics major. Maybe he could help you."

"Probably not."

The awkwardness now over the table was punctured by Aunt Cass barreling back into the room, her purse now under her arm. "Thank you again for covering, Honey Lemon. I shouldn't be too long, but I want to make sure Peni gets there OK." She looked over her niece and nephew. "You two have everything you need?"

"I have to get Baymax back in his case."

"We don't have time. I was told by your professor to bring you two to school at a specific hour. Can't one of your friends bring him later?"

She glanced at Wasabi, who nodded at her. "Yeah, I can bring him. We don't have class until midday, though."

"That's fine. I'll be back long before that." She pushed both Peni and Hiro out the door hurriedly. "See you guys later!"

The four watched her load the two into the car and drive off. Go Go took the opportunity to take another swig of her coffee. "Well...you wanted interesting, Fred. Looks like you're going to get it in spades."

"But we're not playing cards, Go Go."

"...Never mind."

* * *

The old truck went up the driveway into the entrance of the campus, the two Hamadas and single Parker inside. Hiro had spent almost the entirely of the trip fiddling with his backpack. Aunt Cass had tried to make some small talk with the girl in the front seat, but she was silent, either staring out the window or straight down at the glove compartment.

His aunt had chalked it up to just nerves, but Hiro could definitely tell there was something else going on. Maybe Go Go was right; maybe she was just sheltered. Perhaps he could find the time to have an actual conversation with her...provided that she didn't stare at him like a deer in the headlights.

Aunt Cass parked the car and jumped out. "I hope no one cares that I parked her illegally. C'mon, you two. She should be waiting for us right up there.

That "she" turned out to be Professor Granville, who was standing at the top of the stairs and deep in conversation with another girl. This one was dark-skinned, her hair white and swooshed off to the side. She was wearing almost the exact same uniform as Peni was, only a blue skirt was in place of Peni's red pants.

The dean noticed the three coming toward them and immediately straightened up. "Ahh, there is our other guest of honor. Salutations, Ms. Parker. I am Professor Granville. A pleasure to meet you."

Peni took her outstretched hand and shook it, looking at the ground.

"And you must be the Miss Hamada I've been speaking to in our correspondence."

"I am!" Aunt Cass took her hand with much more enthusiasm. "Pleasure to meet you in person! Hiro's told me so much about you!"

Oh good. The adults were having a pleasant conversation with each other. Exactly what Hiro was dreading.

"That's actually not true. Hiro hasn't mentioned you at all, but I'm glad you explained things through our e-mails. I hope that he hasn't caused you too much trouble."

Granville looked over at Hiro, who was busy trying to hide behind one of the large columns. "Mr. Hamada is a...unique individual. Challenges aside, he has proven himself to be a very capable student, which is part of the reason why I recruited him for today."

"That's a relief. I'm sure he's learned a lot from you." Aunt Cass looked at her phone. "But I should be getting back to the Cafe. You be good, sweetie!" She gave Peni a quick hug and started walking back to the car. "I'll be back at seven to come pick you guys up!"

As she got into the truck and drove off, Granville turned her attention back to Hiro. "Mr. Hamada, you failed to mention how lovely a person your aunt is. Must have slipped your mind, I presume?"

"You didn't ask."

"Hm." She motioned to the other girl waiting beside her. "By the way, this is our other guest this week, Ms. Adeline Brock. She hails from the same high school Ms. Parker goes to."

"Addy." The girl nodded her head at him. "And you didn't tell me you had a cousin, Peni! You never tell me anything."

Peni's eyes glared at her, saying nothing.

"...Well. Now that we've all been properly introduced, we should probably get started."

The four started walking into the campus, and Granville again motioned to Hiro. "My apologies, Mr. Hamada, but there has been a slight change in plans this morning. Apparently, a few of my colleagues have some concerns about us 'running a daycare center', as they put it."

"But we're probably smarter than them."

Peni's outburst caused Hiro to stare at her in surprise, but Granville nodded knowingly. "You are undoubtedly correct, Ms. Parker, but alas, we had to sort out some paperwork to get you two here, and they must have taken some issue to it. So, you and Ms. Brock will have to come with me for now."

She turned to Hiro. "So, Mr. Hamada, that means I must leave you behind for now. I wish I could say that this will not take long, but you know how this things can go. Buresaucracy and all that."

"No...actually, I don't."

He heard Addy giggling from beside Granville, and saw another indistinguishable glare from Peni.

"Either way, I'm sure you will use this additional time in a constructive manner. The administrative building is where I will be taking them, which is only a short walk from here. I shall retrieve you when we have everything sorted out."

She walked across the courtyard with Peni and Addy, and Hiro found himself alone. He wished that he had time to bring Baymax with him, but now he was on campus at the break of dawn with no one to talk to.

"Wait a minute."

He _did_ have someone to talk to.

* * *

_An hour later..._

The automatic door whooshed open, revealing the empty lab to the boy genius. He hit the lights and adjusted the laptop in his hands, waving to the area with a flourish. "See? Everything is exactly as it was. Just a little less of you in it."

The laptop sighed at him. _"Genius Boy, you __**do**__ know that there are ten other biotech labs, right? All structured exactly just like this one."_

"...No."

Hiro set the computer down on the table, turning it so Karmi could see him. "But it's clean. I've been cleaning it every couple of days. With...cleaner and everything."

She slowly shook her head at him. _"Hiro."_

"And the computer's up to date. I had to put some extra anti-virus software on it, but it should do the trick."

"_Hiro, stop. I know what you're trying to do."_

He cocked his head at her. "What am I doing?"

"_You're attempting to keep my old lab off-limits from anyone else in case I come back. Which is...sweet. And a little creepy."_

Hiro looked away, not wanting to say what he was thinking.

"_If I come back-"_

"When." Hiro's eyes returned to the screen. "When you come back."

Karmi stared at him, not deterred. _"...**If** I come back, they can put me in another lab. It's really not that big of a deal. They're all the same."_

"But this one's _yours_."

The two were in a staredown, neither one giving an inch. It was only the sound of Granville's voice from the hallway that caused Hiro to jolt up. "Oh crap, she must be done with Peni."

"_Wait, who's-"_

His eyes darted to one of the lower cabinets on the moving island table. He didn't have time to do anything else. "Sorry, Karmi! I have to go for a little bit! Talk to you later!" Not waiting for a response, he slammed the laptop shut and ducked into the cabinet, closing the door with a thud.

And just in time, because he heard Granville in the hallway. She was mentioning something about the biotech major and their extensive successes in the field and all that jazz. He just hoped that she didn't walk into the actual room.

"And this is one of our labs right here."

Unbelievable. She walked in.

"As you can see, this one is currently unoccupied. But we take excellent care of all of our establishments, whether occupied or not." He heard her walk to the center of the room. "And the lab tables are compartmentalized for easy reconfigurations. Observe."

Hiro lurched into the wall as Granville pushed the table into the far counter. "Now, I know the both of you are not biotech prospects, but interdepartmental coordination is important when it comes to team projects. Mr. Hamada will attest to that personally…as soon as we can locate him."

He rubbed his head as he felt her lean on the counter. "Why don't you two explore a little bit more? I shall catch up in a moment."

He heard two sets of shoes walk out the door, and a finger tap right above his hiding spot. "Mr. Hamada, you can come out now. Do not bother trying to pretend you're not here; you left the lights on and the door open."

Hiro opened the cabinet door and tumbled out, his head now hurting double the amount. "Ow."

"I thought I told you, Mr. Hamada, that this lab was off-limits."

"You never technically told me that."

"Again with the technicalities. Perhaps you should get a refresher on what the rules are of this institute."

Hiro sheepishly walked with Granville out of the lab. It wasn't until they were halfway down the hallway that he suddenly remembered something. "Professor, I forgot my laptop! I need to go back and get it!"

"Oh, no you do not! If I let you go back, you will probably build a tent inside and camp in there until someone forces you out." She motioned to the girl walking toward them. "Ms. Parker. Can you please go to the laboratory that I unearthed Mr. Hamada from and fetch his laptop? Meet us back at my office, please."

"And I left it on, but it's low on battery power," Hiro added. "Can you turn it off when you get it?"

Peni nodded silently, and started back down the hallway.

"It is Lab #3. On your right as you go down."

As she turned the corner, Hiro saw Granville staring at him again. "What?"

"I have said nothing, Mr. Hamada." She turned away from him, starting her walk again. "Follow, please."

* * *

_A few doors down…_

Peni ducked into the next lab. Maybe this was the one the professor had been referencing. She hadn't noticed any sort of numbering on the doors; maybe she was referencing the amount from the entrance of the building.

But it looked like this was the one. One of the cabinet doors was ajar, and a dark gray laptop was sitting in it. Carefully, she plucked it off the ground and set it on the counter, opening it up.

There was one program that was still open on the start-up screen: a small chat window with a new message on it.

_I'm with my family now, so I can't video chat if you come back on. Unless you want to get interrogated by my grandmother._

Peni tilted her head. This was intriguing. Who was this person that her cousin was talking to?

She turned to see if anyone was looking at her from the hallway. Content, she poked out a single sentence.

_Who is this?  
_

She stared at the computer screen, wondering if there was going to be a response. Luckily for her, whoever was on the other end responded quickly.

_Ha ha. Very funny, Genius Boy._

Genius Boy? What an odd nickname. This required further investigation.

_I am not this Genius Boy you speak of. I am Peni._

The reply was swift. _Peni? That's the best name you could come up with? At least use a name from someone at school._

_It is my name. I am at school. Did you come here?_

She walked out of the lab, the computer still open. This was an interesting conversation.

_OK, I'll play along. Yes, "Peni". I used to go to school there. With Hiro._

Peni looked up to see where she was going, still typing.

_I am also here with Hiro. He is a very interesting person, and someone that I wish to get to know better. Perhaps I should talk to him more when I return to his house tonight._

She could almost hear the banging of the keys on the other end of the chat.

_EXCUSE ME!?_

Peni turned the corner and saw Granville's office door in her sights. She quickly typed out her last message.

_My apologies. I must go. It has been good to talk to you, mysterious person. Perhaps we will meet each other at some point._

Peni moved the cursor to the lower corner, starting the process of turning it off. If she had looked closer, she would've seen Karmi's next message popping up in the chat...but the screen turned black, completing the shutdown process. She closed the laptop and tucked it under her arm, putting a hand on the doorknob.

* * *

_Mid-afternoon…_

Hiro's feet were starting to hurt from all the walking. He never knew how many nooks and crannies that the campus had. He would have to make sure to make a mental note of everything once he got home.

And also ice his feet for the rest of the evening.

At least lunch had afforded him some time to sit down, as well as catch up his friends on what had happened. Through bites of his burger, he gave as much information as he could, but Granville decided to interrupt them with proper introductions to everyone else of Addy and Peni. Addy had shook everyone's hand and even seemed interested in Wasabi's work in Applied Physics, but Peni was once again off in her own world.

Hiro couldn't figure her out, and it was starting to agitate him. Ever since she had walked back into Granville's office with his laptop, she had the same blank look on her face. She showed signs of emotions (staring at Baymax when they visited his lab), but it only came in small bursts.

"Mr. Hamada."

He was brought back down to Earth by almost running right smack into Granville's back. "Yes, Professor?"

"You will be happy to know that your services as my co-guide are no longer required for the rest of today."

They were back walking around campus, heading toward one of the far ends that he never ventured through. A couple of large warehouses were built there. Hiro had always assumed that some sort of aerospace or engineering work went on inside, but he had never bothered to check.

"_Professor Granville, I will escort Hiro back to his laboratory."  
_

"Thank you, Baymax. That would be appreciated." Granville started poking at the console on the door, putting in a passcode to open it.

"Wait."

She turned back toward Hiro, who was now staring up at the wall. "Yes, Mr. Hamada?"

"What's in there?"

Granville looked forward again, finishing with her code. "Part of our special guests' accommodations, and I will say nothing more."

"Because you can't?" Hiro asked.

"Because I _won't._"

She waved to Addy and Peni, who walked through the door. "Mr. Hamada, there are some things that I cannot tell you about, and this is one of those things. Believe me when I tell you that I have everything under control." She stepped through and put her hand on the handle. "Your aunt will be coming to pick up the both of you at seven o'clock. Please meet me at the front of the campus then. And do _not _make me pull you out of a cabinet again."

She shut the door behind her, and Hiro was left with Baymax outside. He could've turned around and walked with him back to his lab, waiting until seven and going home with his family like a good little boy.

"...I need to see what's inside."

Or he could do this.

Hiro's curiosity was getting the best of him, and that coupled with his mind was a dangerous combination.

"_I have reservations about your statement."_

"Yeah, yeah, whatever. C'mon."

He had already seen his window of opportunity. Not really a window per se, but a ventilation shaft partially hidden by the trees on the side of the building. It was just within reach of Baymax's hand...and Baymax's screwdriver finger.

The cover fell to the ground, the screws being held in his hand. _"I still have reservations."_

"I'll be quick, Baymax," Hiro said, heaving himself into the shaft. "Just...act casual until I get back."

Baymax looked around the trees, noticing a squirrel on one of the higher branches. He waved his hand clockwise at it. _"Hello. I am Baymax."  
_

The squirrel was apparently not interested, instead ducking back into the forest.

"_...Goodbye."  
_

* * *

Hiro crawled on his hands and knees, sweating. It felt like he had been going on for an hour, but it was really only a couple of minutes. He had to unexpectedly climb upwards, and his sneakers had kept slipping on the wall of the shaft.

"And Aunt Cass says I don't get any exercise," he panted.

He was almost at the end of the tunnel, and he saw light coming from the other end, as well as an enormous amount of noise filling his ears. "All this for those two? There had better be something really big in here, or else-"

His eyes peered through the cracks of the vents.

"Or else..."

The first thing he noticed was Peni, her youthful appearance a stark contrast to all of the adults in the room. She was talking to one of them on a raised platform, standing in front of a few consoles. She looked more animated now than the entirety of the time she had been around him.

And the reason why was standing a few feet in front of her.

It was a large humanoid robot, probably somewhere between nine and ten feet tall. Not giant in the grand scheme of things, but Peni looked like a dwarf standing next to it. It was mostly silver in color, with a little red dotted around on the forearms, thighs, and ankles. Its upper body also had those colors, the torso and chest reminding him of Baymax's Overdrive mode.

But it was the very top that got him: between the two large shoulderpads was an oblong head, vertical instead of Baymax's horizontal, and it had two large yellow diamond eyes staring straight ahead. Whatever it was, it looked like it was not operational at the moment.

"I'm not doing a maglev operational system."

Hiro's attention diverted back to Peni, the loudest person in the room. She was pointed up to the arms and talking to that same person, his black hair flowing down to his neck. "What if I'm in the middle of travel and the power source overloads? I'm all of a sudden without arms and legs."

"It will improve your exposure to attacks, Peni. The self-repairing module can only do so much. Trust me, it will be much better in the long run."

"What about the web traps? Can the system handle more than six without overheating?"

"Perhaps," the man said. "That would require additional testing."

He saw Granville walk up from below his vision, coming to a stop next to Peni on the platform. "This is quite an impressive team you have on this project, Ms. Parker. Is Ms. Brock afforded the same advantages as you are?"

Peni scoffed and folded her arms. "I don't want to talk about her."

She walked off, leaving Professor Granville and the man alone for the moment. He saw her bend forward and speak to the man, but he couldn't decipher what she was saying fully because of the noise.

"Michael...prudent...child...parents..."

Hiro's breath caught in his throat. Aunt Cass had mentioned something about Peni's parents, and he remembered Go Go surmising that Aunt May wasn't her actual mom. But what did Granville know about them? Did they have something to do with...this?

His eyes darted around the building, trying to take everything into his memory. It wasn't until he looked directly down that he knew he was in trouble.

Peni had invariably wandered over, maybe to check something on one of the computers. Whatever the reason was, she was staring directly up at the vent at him, her expression back to being vague.

Hiro took a deep breath in...and immediately regretted it, because the layer of dust in the vent invaded his nostrils. He had to cover his mouth to muffle the sneeze coming up his throat. Hopefully, with the amount of noise in the building, no one would notice.

"Hiro."

The whisper came from Peni. Yeah, he couldn't pretend she didn't see him now.

"Peni."

He only saw the top of her head, the sounds of typing coming from below as well. "You probably have questions right now."

"That is the understatement of the year," he muttered.

Peni let out a sound which could have been mistaken for a laugh, but it was very weird coming out of her mouth. She finished with her work and turned around, the back of her head now visible.

"Not now. Tonight. Do what Professor Granville said, and once we get home...I'll tell you everything."

She walked off, returning to the dean and the man called Michael, barking orders to a few random other people. Hiro put his forehead on the floor of the vent, not even bothered by the amount of grime and dust that was collecting on it. He couldn't help but laugh at the ridiculousness of the situation as he started to back up out of the warehouse.

"Never a dull moment in San Fransokyo, I guess."

* * *

**AUTHOR'S NOTE: **So, I've decided to go with the comic version of SP/ /dr (called S.P.I.D.E.R. here in this fic) for now. I say for now because while the appearance holds true to the comics, it will slowly start to drift towards the movie version as the story progresses. And so will Peni.

As I've mentioned before, Peni is going to have a lot of personality struggles in this story, and you're already seeing it here. Quiet and reserved around her family, bossy and boisterous amongst her "team" with S.P.I.D.E.R. You might be wondering when the fun-loving, animesque part of her is going to come out. It will next chapter, don't you worry.

And you probably could smell the B-plot coming a mile away: the ongoing situation between Peni and Karmi. Oh, there will be so many conclusions that she'll be jumping to that poor Hiro's not going to know what to do.

Finally, if you've actually read the comic issue that this story is based off of, you probably know who Michael is going to be. Or do you?

Chapter 3, **Don't Bite The Hand…**, will be out next week. Read and review, if you like. Until next time, everyone.


	4. Don't Bite The Hand

_**Disclaimer: **Big Hero 6 is owned by Disney Animation. Peni Parker (and all associated characters) is owned by Marvel._

* * *

_**Chapter 3 – Don't Bite The Hand...**_

He just_ had _to be nosy, didn't he?

He just _had _to crawl into the air ducts and see what his teacher was hiding, only to find out his cousin has some sort of super robot...thing hiding away in the school warehouse.

OK, that was a weird sentence his brain manufactured.

But the point was still there. Why was everything being hidden from them? Why did Peni have a team of people with her? Why was Granville being so coy about all of the details?

And above all...why was Karmi not answering him back?

Hiro was sitting in his bed with his laptop. He didn't understand; this was consistently the normal time and day that they had decided upon to talk. And she was online. He saw the green dot next to her name, so he knew she was there.

He had been sending her messages for the past hour, ever since he went upstairs to go to bed. Peni was off downstairs talking to Aunt May with Aunt Cass on her computer. Why May was up at two AM her time was anyone's guess, but apparently that was a common enough occurrence that no one questioned it.

_Was it something I said? Or did? Or didn't say?_

Hiro sent off his latest messages, the text starting to pile up on the right side of the screen. For all of those brains in his head, he was mystified. He scrolled up a bit to see his old conversations. Maybe he said something in there?

_I'm not talking to you._

What? What was going on?

_I mean, you clearly are right now, which defeats your whole argument._

He glanced down at the time. It was nearing eleven, and Peni would probably be upstairs soon. He didn't forget that Peni was suppose to explain the entire situation to him, and he didn't want to have two angry girls on his case. If Peni even showed anger.

_Why don't you go talk to "Peni"? I'm sure you'd love to have a conversation with her._

Uh oh. _How do you know about Peni?_

_Oh, so she's real now?  
_

Hiro looked over at the stairs, the light still on down in the living room. _Yeah, she's real. Why wouldn't she be? She's downstairs with Aunt Cass right now._

_She's staying at your house!?_

OK, this conversation was going in a weird direction. It sounded like she was upset, but why? He couldn't figure it out.

_I mean, yeah. Where else is she going to stay?_

The fan kicked on inside his laptop, which may or may not have been metaphorical to the message that just appeared on his screen.

_Fine. Why don't you go enjoy yourself with her? In the meantime, until you realize that you're literally clueless as to why I'm mad, don't talk to me._

Hiro saw the dot next to her game go clear, meaning she had gotten off. Sighing, he closed the laptop, rubbing his nose.

"Can someone please explain what happened?"

_"It would appear that Karmi is upset with you."_

"Gee, you think?"

Hiro reached for his phone. "This is stupid." He dialed her number and put the cell to his ear. Yes, calling her and incurring charges on the phone bill was also stupid, but he had to figure out what was going on.

"_Hi, you've reached Karmi. Sorry I can't come to the phone right now, but if you're someone other than that stupid idiot jerk-face Hiro Hamada, leave a message and I'll get back to you."_

He hung up the call, mystified by how quick she changed her message. Yeah, she was definitely mad, but this would temper off, right? It always did.

But she sounded _really _mad. And to his eternal frustration, he was clueless as to why.

"Girls," he muttered, throwing the phone onto his desk.

"What about girls?"

Hiro looked up to see Peni had arrived back upstairs, pajamas on and that same stare looking at him. He waved her off. "Don't worry about it. One of my friends is mad with me, but what else is new with her?"

"Your friend?"

"Yeah. Her name's Karmi. She used to go to SFIT, but she's on a break for personal reasons."

He saw her eyes slightly widen, but what that meant he didn't know. "May I see her?"

Hiro got up from the bed and shook the mouse to his desktop. His home screen came up to show Peni the photo from the bowling alley. The group of nine were all looking at the camera, the boys sans Hiro in the back and the girls in front. Hiro and Karmi were flanked by Aspen and Go Go, the former not realizing that Doreen had given her the bunny ears. Karmi had her arm around Hiro's neck. If he hadn't known any better, it looked like she was about to choke him to death.

But she hadn't. Quite the opposite.

"That's her," Hiro said, pointing to Karmi.

"These are all of your friends?"

"Yeah."

Peni bent down to look at the two in the center. "She is very pretty."

Hiro looked down at his phone. "Yeah, she is."

"Is she your girlfriend?"

"Huh?"

She tilted her head a little bit. "Are you two in a relationship?"

He blushed and stammered out a reply. "N-no. No, we're not."

Peni's eyes scrolled from right to left, taking in everyone in the picture. "It must be nice to have friends. And someone whom you care for very much."

"Most days it is." Again with the phone. "Except for today, when she yells at me for no reason."

She said nothing, moving over to her bed.

"What about you?" Hiro asked. "Don't you have any friends over in Neo York? You have to have some, right?"

"Not really. It is difficult to make friends when everyone believes that you are some sort of freak."

"Wow. That's cruel."

Peni came back over, her hairpin activated and the spider walking around her shoulder. "Yes. Quite."

Hiro saw the robot and got an idea. "Hang on a sec." He walked over to the far drawer and opened it up. He pulled out his Megabot and remote, setting it on the ground. He flipped the power switch on and worked out the sticks to make sure they were working.

"Is that your robot?"

"One that I used for bot fighting."

Peni crossed her legs underneath her body as she sat down opposite him on the floor. "You used to bot fight?"

"_Yes, but Hiro was caught by the police."  
_

"You didn't really need to add that in, Baymax."

_"It was relevant."_

Hiro made his Megabot do a couple of stretches before pressing the top button. Its limbs instantly detached and hovered around the main body. Peni looked down at it, her interest piqued. "Fascinating. The structure is primitive, but you used the magnetic joints as an evasion technique. That is something that I've looked into for S.P.I.D.E.R."

"S.P.I.D.E.R.? That thing?" He pointed to her robot, who was now on the floor, examining one of the appendages.

"No. What you saw earlier today."

"Oh."

Hiro set his remote down, his attention lost on his robot.

"I did tell you that I would explain things."

"Yeah, I was confused as to why your admissions project was being kept behind lock and key."

"It is not my project. Not...not entirely."

Peni took the clip out of her hair, holding it up with her pointer fingers. Hiro waited for her to speak. It seemed like it was going to be a tale.

"It is a Super-Powered Interfacing Dynamic Emergency Robot, S.P.I.D.E.R. for short. It was a project originally worked on by the military, designed to help civilians and police forces in numerous duties, including law enforcement. Equipped with the latest in anti-criminal technology, it spent several years in the test stage of development."

She ran her finger over the clip, and it cast a projection into the air: the robot that Hiro had seen before, its wire frame rotating on an axis. "As advanced as the technology was at the time, there was a flaw. In order for the robot to fully reach its potential, it required a manual pilot. The government combed through many potential candidates before settling on someone."

"You?"

"No."

Peni looked up at him. "My father."

Hiro said nothing as she continued on. "The pilot had to be the prime candidate, right down to the DNA strands. Out of hundreds of thousands of candidates, my father was the only one who fit all of the criteria. So, with my mother as head of the research team, he became the pilot."

"But something happened, didn't it? That's why Aunt May has you now?"

She nodded. "There was an accident. Not even I know a lot of the details, because I was young at the time. All I know is that the facility that housed the team was caught in an explosion. My parents..."

A single tear rolled down her cheek. "They did not make it out alive."

"I'm so sorry," he whispered.

Peni shuffled over to the bed, putting her back on the side. "After their deaths, I went to live with Aunt May and Uncle Ben. As great as they are, they are rather ill-equipped to handle someone of my intelligence. That is not their fault, however." She deactivated the projection and returned the clip to her hair. "I imagine you run into a similar situation with Aunt Cass."

Hiro scooted over to her, mimicking her position. "Yeah. But it doesn't matter. She takes care of me. We're family. That's all that matters." He looked down at her robot now jumping on top of the reformed Megabot. "My parents died when I was three. I don't remember them at all. I've been trying to learn more about them from Aunt Cass. At least you got to know yours before-"

There was that stare again, and he backtracked. "Sorry. This isn't a contest. I just...I know what you went through. And without Tadashi here, it got even worse."

"I enjoyed Tadashi. He was...kind. I am sorry about his passing."

"Thanks."

The two sat together for a moment, looking over their creations size each other up. Hiro suddenly realized something.

"That doesn't explain why you have your dad's project _now_. What changed?"

Peni's eyes followed her robot around. "A few years ago, I was approached by government agents who had worked in the same department as my parents. They were looking to start the project over again. They had heard of my intellect and some of the machinations I had made at my young age and on a whim wished to discuss me coming on as the pilot. Both Aunt May and Uncle Ben, who also work for the government, wanted nothing to do with it. But I was curious. So I went with them."

She brushed some hair out from behind her head, and Hiro saw something peculiar: a small square hole inserted into the base of her neck. It glowed lightly in the dark, lines running from it outward in a cross. "It turns out that my father was not the only perfect candidate for the program. I was as well. They were very adamant that I come on with them."

"And you agreed?"

"Yes. Under one condition," Peni said, letting her hair fall. "That the final say on every facet of the project would be done by me. It took a lot of negotiation, but they agreed with the caveat that I take on some of their agents as part of my team. I'm sure you saw them when you were in that duct."

"Yeah. That Michael guy?"

"Dr. Morbius. He and his son both serve on my team, he as the lead technician and his son as one of the mechanics. They are good at their jobs, but..."

Hiro waited for the rest of her sentence, but got nothing. He reached for his remote...

"It has to be frustrating."

Hiro looked up from the two robots playing with each other. "Hmm?"

Peni was also surveying them, but her head was balanced on her arms, her eyes slightly closed. "Having everyone treat you like a child but knowing you are the smartest one in the room by a large amount."

He straightened up, noting the look of exasperation on her face.

"Before my parents passed, they got my intelligence tested. I came back with a grade of 150. And I was seven at the time. Everyone around them was excited to see what I had to offer. And nobody even bothered to ask what I wanted."

"What test did they use for you?"

Peni looked up at him. "KABC-II. You?"

"Stanford-Binet. I got a 145. Just into the category of 'Very Gifted'. I mean...I already knew that by that time, if it's any consolation."

"Strange how people of average intelligence are assigned to give tests to the ones with superior intelligence."

"Yeah."

The two fell into silence. The two robots had stopped trying to fight and appeared to have some sort of Rock-Paper-Scissors contest, with predictable results.

"So that's why you brought it to SFIT? To use it as a project for enrollment?"

"That is the intention, yes. And also to test out the original intent of the program." Peni replied. "But in terms of other specifics, I haven't realized them yet."

Hiro saw the two robots finished their game, now sitting beside each other and rocking back and forth. He didn't remember programming that into the Megabot. It did look like they were slowing down. "We should probably try to go to sleep. You have your things to worry about, and I have to find out what's going on with Karmi."

Peni nodded and started walking to her bed. Hiro pressed the button on his remote, deactivating his Megabot.

"Hiro."

It was the first time she had called him by name, so it took a second for it to register. "Yeah?"

"Do you think it would be alright if I spoke to your friends again tomorrow?" Peni's robot was back on its clip, straight and rigid. "I feel like I made the wrong impression with them this morning. I also should work on my social interaction some more."

"Oh yeah. That's fine."

All of a sudden, a giant shadow whooshed right over the house, the air becoming thick and heavy. The lights started to flicker around them, and even the lights on Baymax's case were not exempt. He looked around the bedroom. _"Oh no."_

Hiro shook his head, a slight buzzing in his brain. "What was that? Some kind of thunderstorm?"

"Ughhh."

Peni was on her knees, trying to brace herself on her bed. Hiro hurried over to her. "Are you OK?"

"Yes," she said weakly, getting helped up by Hiro. "I will be fine. It's just that due to the circuitry in my neck, I am more susceptible to high amounts of localized electricity."

"Is that what that was?"

"I believe so. I am not sure." Peni sat down on the bed, rubbing her neck. "This did not start becoming an occurrence until I started traveling to colleges. This happened one of the days I was visiting the Neo York Institute of Technology." She pointed to her suitcase. "Can you go into my bag and get one of my comics?"

"Comics?"

He peered down into her bag and lo and behold, there was a small stack of comic books inside, each one put into a protective sleeve. "Why do you bring them with you?" he asked as he pulled a random one out.

"They help me relax and calm my mind. It must seem like a childish thing to partake it, right?"

Hiro chuckled, handing her the dark-colored comic. "You should talk to Fred tomorrow. I think you two would get along. He could also quiz you on your comic knowledge. I bet he probably knows more than you."

Peni turned to the middle of her comic. "I sincerely doubt that."

"Well, at least consider it." Hiro walked over to his own bed to settle in. "Use it as part of your social interaction."

"I suppose. Are you going to bed?"

He checked his phone just to see if Karmi was going to text him, but to no avail. "Yeah, but you can stay up. It won't bother me."

"Very well. Have a good night, then."

"Good night. Baymax, hit the lights."

The overhead lights went off and Tadashi's desk lamp came on as Hiro closed his eyes. He heard her turn a page, a slight chuckle come out from her mouth. It was nice hearing her be something other than emotionless.

And then sleep caught up to him, and he heard nothing more.

* * *

_The next morning…_

Hiro walked into the cafe, his brain still a little frazzled. Whatever that thing was last night, it made his mind a little numb. Peni had called it "localized electrcity", but he knew weather didn't work like that. Or at least any whether he knew of.

"You have to send her back."

Hiro took his seat and looked at Go Go, thrown off by her sudden interjection. "Huh?"

"She has to go back to Neo York." The Korean had an exasperated look on her face as she pointed to the far end of the table. Peni and Fred were deep in one of his Boss Awesome comics, excitedly pointing to things on the page. "She and Fred have been talking about comics non-stop for twenty minutes, and I can't take it anymore. I can't have two Freds here."

Honey Lemon chuckled. "Go Go, she's opening up. Let her be."

"...Can I let her be over at another table?"

Hiro ignored her, looking outside at the rain falling down. It reminded him of the events of last night.

Speaking of which…

"Did you guys feel something weird last night? Like a tingling of sorts?"

"Do you want me to bring Aunt Cass over here and give you the talk about the birds and the bees?"

"What? No. Not that," he retorted. "Last night, at around midnight. This weird...surge."

"Almost like electricity?" Wasabi asked. "Yeah, a little bit. All of the lights in my apartment went on the fritz. No broken bulbs or anything, which is great because I don't have any extra ones at my apartment."

"Us too. I was in the middle of e-mailing Doreen when our power went out. It came right back on, though."

Hiro took a bite out of his toast. "Interesting. Thunderstorm?"

"It did not storm last night." Peni looked away from the comic that Fred had slapped onto the table and turned to the group. "There were also not any known lightning strikes in the city limits as well."

"Heat lightning, maybe?"

"That would not occur in a climate like San Fransokyo's. Nor Neo York's."

Honey Lemon tilted her head at Peni. "It happened over there, too?"

"Yes, a couple of times. It seems to be some sort of localized electricity-based anomaly. Something that seems like it is man-made, not naturally occurring. I...have a sixth sense about this sort of thing."

Hiro saw Peni instinctively grasp the back of her neck. He realized that she probably hadn't told them about any of their conversations last night, and perhaps it was better to keep it secret for now. "Look, maybe High Voltage broke out and is causing trouble again. Wouldn't be the first time."

"And maybe _someone_ is already ahead of us on that thinking."

Go Go pointed to the television, where the group looked up to see a press conference in progress. A bunch of microphones were popping up from the bottom of the screen, where Chief Cruz was standing behind them. He was holding his hands up as if he was trying to calm someone down.

"Aunt Cass, can you turn that up?" Go Go asked.

Hiro's aunt hit the volume on the remote, and Cruz's words filled their ears. _"Trust me, ladies and gentlemen, this is __something that we are percfectly capable of handling __on our own. We are looking into reports of power outages around the city, and I can't speak any further on that."  
_

"_Sir, do you believe that High Voltage is involved?" _a voice came from outside the screen.

"_Since those two are currently residing in prison, that's highly unlikely, although we are not ruling anything out."  
_

"_Perhaps you can bring in Big Hero 6 to help with your investigation."  
_

Chief Cruz's face became contorted with anger, bending down to stare at whoever asked that question. _"There is no force on Earth that would let me work with those fugitives. They are still wanted criminals. Even though they have apparently gone dark, they will show up eventually. __And then we'll see who are the __**real **__criminals. That's all for now."_

The chief walked off to a barrage of other questions, none of which he was answering. Aunt Cass lowered the volume again, frowning. "I could've sworn something was up. Opened up late because of the faulty lights. Hope Diego can figure this out."

The gang said nothing, all lost in their own thinking. The silence was only punctured by a loud huff coming from the mouth of-

"Peni? Are you OK?"

Hiro saw his cousin still staring at the TV, a look of anger in her eyes. "I do not like that man."

"Well," Go Go said, raising her coffee to her, "That makes two of us."

"What does he have against Big Hero 6?" Not waiting for an answer, she slapped her hands on the table, surprising everyone. "Big Hero 6 is the best thing that's ever happened to this city! Why would he ruin that? I am so...UGH!"

Peni stomped off upstairs, leaving the gang shocked by the sudden outburst of emotion. After a moment, Go Go turned back to the table, smirking.

"OK, she can stay."

Hiro smiled, but quickly changed course. "Yeah, we need to find out what's going on here. A city-wide outage, with no supervillains in sight? Seems suspicious, right?"

"Yes, and this calls for an _investigation_!"

"Fred, stop it. You're just mad that we haven't been superheroing around like you want to."

He said nothing, only pulling out his flute again. He put it up to his lips...only for the tail end of a fork to get stuck at the end of it.

"OK, you've made your point."

"Are we even sure we have to get involved?" Wasabi ducked out of the way of Fred's flute. "Electrical problems happen all the time, even for a major city like San Fransokyo."

Hiro's phone rang, and he stepped away to answer it, hoping it was Karmi. "Hello?"

"_Good morning, Mr. Hamada."_

"Professor Granville?"

Four chairs rubbed against the floor as his friends leaned in to try to catch the conversation. He took another step away from them, pressing the phone closer to his ear.

"_Why yes, I am also having a good morning. Thank you for returning my greeting."  
_

"Sorry, I've had a busy day so far."

_"As have I, and that is part of the reason why I am calling. Did you see Chief Cruz's press conference this morning?"  
_

"Part of it," Hiro affirmed. "The part where he called us out at the end. And where he said he was investigating all of the power grid problems with the city."

"_It is not a power grid problem."_

He pantomimed a pen to Honey Lemon, who got the hint. "What makes you think that?"

"_Because the origination of the anomaly seems to be from Ms. Parker and Ms. Brock's headquarters."  
_

Hiro grabbed the pen from the Latina's hand and wrote out some words on the sticky note. "Do you think that S.P.I.D.E.R. has something to do with it?"

_"...And might I ask how you know about Ms. Parker's robot, Mr. Hamada?"_

"Ummm..." He glanced back at his friends, who were now thoroughly confused. "Lucky guess?"

He heard the dean sigh on the other end. _"Well, to be honest, I don't really know what I was expecting. You are family; __I suppose __you were bound to find out eventually. In any case, I need to speak to both you and Ms. Parker when you arrive at school. I will be in my office; meet me there."_

"OK. I will."

_"And Mr. Hamada?"_

"Yeah?"

A slight pause, and then her voice. _"I cannot begin to stress to you that you must not speak of her project to anyone. Not your aunt. Not even your classmates. Not __**anyone**__. Do I make myself clear?"_

There was an extra layer of seriousness in her tone that even caught Hiro by surprise. Despite that, he found himself nodding. "Crystal."

_"Good. Then I will see you and Ms. Parker momentarily."_

Hiro hung up the call, the paper curling into his fingers.

"You OK, Hiro?" Honey Lemon asked.

He looked to see his friends staring back at him. "Yeah, I'm fine."

"What did she want?"

"I...can't tell you."

Go Go stared at him. "Well, that's not ominous or anything."

"She...uhh..." He had to come up with something on the fly. "She wants to talk to me and Peni. I don't know why."

"Well, why didn't you just say so?" Fred spoke up. "And we were all worried over nothing!"

"Yeah..." Hiro's eyes glanced over at Go Go, who was giving him a death glare. "Nothing at all..."

* * *

_Later that morning…_

Hiro and Peni were taking the walk to Professor Granville's office, the former's mind swimming. Why was he going with her? Was it because of the weird problems in the city? Was it because of Peni? Was it both of those things?

Peni, on the other hand, had gone back to her stone-faced expression. The camaraderie that she had built up with the group back at the cafe seems to be so long ago.

"Did she mention why she wanted to speak to the both of us?"

"No. She didn't. But she'll probably tell us as soon as we walk in."

"_Yes, Professor Granville is very direct when it comes to her conversations."_

Baymax had taken the trip with them, if only to provide some comfort. Or in case someone needed a hug, which Hiro felt like he may need any second.

They reached the door, but Hiro could feel something was wrong. It was slightly ajar, and there were voices coming from inside. Loud, angry voices. A man's voice came through the crack.

"That is a very bold accusation you are making, Professor."

"I have not levied any accusation against anyone, Michael," came Granville's reply. "I am merely trying to figure out what happened last night. The board is asking questions that I can no longer provided minimal answers for. You know as well as I that keeping their projects disassociated from them is my top priority, but it is becoming increasingly hard when I am not given the information I need."

"You think one of us had something to do with it?" Addy said defiantly.

"The epicenter of the anomaly originated on campus, Ms. Brock. Even though everyone has provided alibis, and they are credible, I would not be doing my due diligence if I did not investigate."

"And what about Peni?"

"I will be questioning Ms. Parker once she arrives. Leave that to me."

Hiro glanced at Peni, who shared his inquisitive look. "They don't seem happy."

"No. They do not." She raised her fist to the door and knocked softly on it, the voices inside dying down.

"Ahh, and there she is now. If I can ask that you all please leave the room. I will meet you back at the warehouse later."

The door slammed open, and the man that Hiro had seen in the duct stomped out, followed by a boy. They both had long black hair, but the boy's was swept to one side of his head, the other side shaved down short. He had a necklace around his neck with a cross on it.

"Dr. Morbius. Michael."

The two turned to Hiro, Peni, and Baymax, just realizing they were there. "Ahh! Peni! I didn't not realize you had arrived already. I suppose Professor Granville wants to talk to you as well?"

"I suppose, although I am not sure as to why."

"Yes, well. Prepare to be given the third degree. Come along, Michael."

The boy didn't respond as he stared at Peni, his pale eyes looking right at her. Peni took a step backwards, off-put by the silence.

"Michael!"

He finally turned down the hallway and walked off with the doctor. As they turned the corner, Hiro let out a breath. "Wow. That guy was..."

"Creepy. Weird. An edge lord."

"An edge...what?"

"Edge lord." Peni crossed her arms and stared down the hallway, her voice lowered. "Talks about weird things when he is performing maintenance on S.P.I.D.E.R. Tries to play it off as a joke, but ever since he has joined my team...it has been one thing after another. Not even his father can calm him down sometimes."

"Wait." Hiro pointed down the hall. "They're both Michael?"

"Yes. Dr. Michael Morbius and Michael Morbius Jr. The doctor worked on the S.P.I.D.E.R project in the very early stages, but left before my father was chosen as the original pilot. He came back when I was selected. He felt that it was the least he could do, considering the circumstances..."

Addy walked out next, casting a glance over them. "Hey, Peni." She lowered her voice seductively as she gazed at Hiro. "Hey, Hiro."

Peni glared at her again, and Addy was quick to laugh at her. "Calm down, Peni. You seem antsy this morning. You should take some cranky pills before we get started today." Giggling, she went off in the same direction as the two Michaels.

"Was...she flirting with me?" Hiro asked, his cheeks pink.

"She flirts with everyone," Peni said. "Even me. It is incredibly frustrating, because she is a gifted pilot. But aggravating to work with."

"Wait, I thought you said-"

A cough rang out, and the two turned to their left to see Professor Granville waving them in. "Close the door, please."

Hiro, Peni, and Baymax walked into the office, the door now shut. They walked to the head of the desk, Granville resuming her serious tone. "I assume you are wondering why I brought the both of you here?"

"Yeah, among other things."

Granville looked back and forth between the two of them. "I need to know where the two of you were last night. Between eleven and midnight."

His head cocked back, a little surprised. "We were at home. We were talking until early morning. Baymax was there; I can show you his recording."

"That won't be necessary." Granville turned to Peni. "Is that summary accurate, Ms. Parker?"

"Yes, Professor."

She tapped the top of her desk, still looking at her. "Ms. Parker, I need not remind you that the circumstances of your project are very sensitive and not for public consumption. You are still aware of this, yes?"

She nodded.

"Mr. Hamada is a very trustworthy individual, so I have no qualms about him knowing, but it cannot go any further than that. Is that understood?"

"Professor..." She took a step forward, away from Hiro. "With all due respect, I am aware of the implications of my actions. But if our projects are to eventually reach the public sector, they need to be made aware of its existence. My father was aware of that as well, and-"

"Your father was a grown man."

Peni stopped, her eyes slightly widened.

"As intelligent and gifted as you are, you are still a fourteen-year-old girl, whose future is still to be decided. My concern is for your well-being. And as your potential teacher, you would understand that as of right now, things are not where they should be." She glanced at Hiro, a small smile on her face. "I already have one underage student who's intellect has proven to be a challenge; I wish to be prepared before I might have another one or two."

Hiro looked down at the floor.

"Baymax, Ms. Parker, give Mr. Hamada and I the room, please. This will only take a few minutes."

Peni was about to say something, but Hiro interrupted. "It's fine. I'm used to this sort of thing by now."

Satisfied, she and Baymax walked off to the door, shutting it behind them. Now alone, Hiro stood at the ready to hear whatever she had to say.

"Ms. Parker was not to disclose any of the details about the S.P.I.D.E.R. project to you. Or anyone. It is that serious."

"But it's _her_ project," he said back. "Shouldn't she have the right-"

"That is the thing, Mr. Hamada. It is not her project. Not yet." Granville turned her laptop to show him a document on her screen. It looked like it had a bunch of legalese he couldn't decipher. "Whether it will be hinges on the outcome of the test phase, which is still currently going on."

Hiro noticed Addy's scrawl at the bottom of the page and remembered her words. "Addy has one too? A giant robot thing?"

"Yes."

"Does it have a name?"

"Not one that you will know."

"Aww."

Granville closed her computer, her full attention now on him. "If the situation with Ms. Parker and Ms. Brock isn't enough, I also have to deal with this mysterious outage from last night. Everyone who I have interviewed said they know nothing, but I have a suspicion that someone is not telling me the truth."

"You said it originated on campus, right? Probably in the warehouse that Peni's working in?"

She stared at him for a moment, not sure whether to reprimand him or thank him. "Yes, I believe so. Dr. Morbius suggested some sort of power failure, but the warehouses are on a closed circuit. It would not have affected the entire city like it did."

"Professor, we didn't do anything. I swear."

"And I believe you, Mr. Hamada, which makes this all the more frustrating."

Hiro looked back at the door. "What about Addy? Maybe she...took her thing out for a test drive?"

"Ms. Brock was not on campus at the time of the incident."

"She told you that?"

"She did not need to tell me that." Granville turned her chair to look out the window. "Because she was at my residence sleeping at the time."

"Wait, she..." Hiro was amazed. "Professor, isn't that like against the rules or something? Impropriety or whatever?"

"Ms. Brock has no family, and I was not comfortable with her staying on campus in one of the dorms, especially with her being so young. I merely made an accommodation for her, nothing more."

He shook that off. Granville showing possible favoritism to Addy was the least of his concerns. "Professor, maybe we can help with finding out what it was. Go Go can do a little digging. And I bet that-"

"Mr. Hamada."

Granville cut him off with a wave of her hand. "Whether I wish to get other people involved is irrelevant. They cannot get involved. Given that, I think it would be prudent for you to focus your attention...elsewhere."

"Huh?"

She leaned in, beckoning him forward with a finger. He stepped forward to listen to her lowered voice.

"High Voltage escaped last night."

"What? I thought Chief Cruz said they were in prison."

"They were. He was apparently informed of their escape after the news conference. You can probably guess he was not very happy about that development. So maybe it would be in your best interest to exclude them as possible suspects of this incident. If you get my meaning."

Hiro nodded. "I'll do a flyover with Baymax. Maybe we can find something."

"Do that. And maybe stay out of sight of the police. If memory serves me correctly, you are still not on their good side right now."

"OK." Hiro turned to leave, reaching for the door.

"Mr. Hamada."

He looked back at Granville, who was glaring at him with the sternest of faces.

"It is imperative that you do not speak of these events and conversations to anyone. I apologize for sounding like a broken record, but Ms. Parker's entire future may be dependent on the success and continued secrecy of this project. It would also hurt her if she was intentionally causing misdeeds both here and in Neo York."

"Professor, you don't really think she has something to do with it, do you? I thought you said you trusted me."

"I do. _You_. But we both know that when it comes to the field of robotics, a person does not always have to be physically present in order for a malicious event to occur."

He put on his best serious expression. "She didn't do anything."

Granville continued to stare at him. "And how do you know that?"

"If she's anything like me, you would know-"

"Ms. Parker is very _much_ like you, Mr. Hamada." She leaned back in her chair, not breaking their gaze. "And that is what concerns me."

Hiro had no response, and it looked like Granville wasn't going to wait for one. "If you can tell Ms. Parker to wait in the hallway for a moment longer, I will escort her to her workspace once I am finished here."

He walked out the door and closed it behind him. Looking down, he was surprised to see Baymax and Peni sitting on the floor, a chessboard lighting up the screen on his chest. Judging by the amount of empty spaces, the game looked like it was going quickly.

"Pawn to e4."

"_Interesting. That move is used to commonly open a game of chess, known as a King's Pawn Game. It is not commonly used in the middle. I shall move my castle to h5."_

Peni looked up to see Hiro staring at him. "I suppose Professor Granville talked to you about me. Also about how I might have something to do with what was happening here and in Neo York. It makes sense; everyone must be considered a suspect. If I were her, I would do the same thing. Queen to a4."

The white crown moved to the left side of the screen.

"But I am beginning to have a feeling of...excitement. I wish to know what is going on. And I wish to help. I understand Professor Granville's hesitance for you to help me, because she was correct. I was not to tell you about any of this. But I do not regret any of it."

"_Bishop to d6."_

Baymax's black piece moved accordingly.

"Perhaps you and I are more alike than I first thought. Maybe that is why I kept the door open slightly. You appear to be having a negative influence on me."

She pointed to the screen. "Queen to d6."

The crown collided with his bishop, pushing it to the rest of his discarded pieces. The screen began to flash, a single word coming up to signal the end of the game.

"_Checkmate."_

* * *

**AUTHOR'S NOTE: **As I've been writing this story, it's struck me just how similar Hiro and Peni are. Both very intelligent, both know more than their own good. Only one of them is a superhero in disguise.

Wonder how long that will stay that way?

I've noticed that we've been a little light on the action, so that's going to get fixed very quickly. You see the beginnings of the conflict starting to boil up, and by the end of the next chapter, we're going to hit the ground running.

Because if you've read the comic this story is based off of, you know what's coming. Right?

...Maybe?

Read and review, if you like. Until next time, everyone.


	5. VENOM

_**Disclaimer: **Big Hero 6 is owned by Disney Animation. Peni Parker and all associated characters are owned by Marvel, but specifically Gerard Way and Jake Wyatt (which the former is apparently is the frontman for My Chemical Romance; who knew?)._

* * *

_**Chapter 4 – V.E.N.O.M.**_

_The next morning..._

"So let me see if I have this straight."

_"Oh no."  
_

The girl started pacing in her crowded living room. "You're mad at your boy-"

"_He's not my boy, Doreen."_

"Shh! I'm dramatically recounting your tale. Don't interrupt me!"

Karmi sighed over the phone, but didn't say anything else.

"As I was saying, you're mad at your boy for reasons you won't tell me directly, and the only thing you've hinted at is that there may or may not be another girl involved. Do you know anything about this person?"

_"Her name is Peni. With an 'I'."_

"Hmm." She put a finger to her mouth. "That could be the sign of a serial killer. Never trust anyone with an 'I' at the end of their name."

Karmi said nothing.

"Oh. Right. I forgot. Are you an actual serial killer?" Doreen gasped. "Are you going to kill _me _and chop me up into fine little bits?"

_"Trust me, I'm thinking about it,"_ Karmi muttered.

We now focus on the apartment of one Doreen Aileen Green, cheerful girl, savior of squirrels, and currently the confidant (unwillingly or otherwise) of Karmi. She had her on the phone, walking around the mess that was her living space. Several plants were sitting near the open window, newspaper was covering the coffee table, and nuts of every kind, shape, and size were everywhere. In the back corner was a giant potted tree, on which was a nest with a squirrel inside, a ribbon around its neck. It looked like it was trying to sleep, but that wasn't going to be possible with his owner interrogating Karmi.

"Karmi, let me remind you that _you_ called _me_. So just tell me what's happening."

The biotech major crossed her arms at her desk. It didn't look like she was going to get out of this in the manner she wanted. _"I just...think there's something going on with Genius Boy. Can't I just be worried about him?"  
_

"No. You can't. Because it involves this Peni girl, and if there's one thing I know about other than wildlife, and street names, and how to grow nuts in an astonishingly small apartment, it's girls."

She flopped herself onto her brown leather couch, her hair falling over her eyes. "Karmi, can I ask you a serious question? Preceded by a bunch of statements?"

"_Yes...?"_

Doreen looked out the window, thinking about what she wanted to say. She had to tread carefully here. "You're not dating Hiro. You're not in a relationship with him. Heck, you threaten to murder him like the secret serial killer you are all the time."

Karmi sighed again. _"Yes, all of those things are true. Except for the serial killer part."  
_

"...Then why do you care?"

"_Huh?"  
_

"Let's just assume for a moment that you're freaking out for a legitimate reason, and let's face it...you _are_ freaking out. Let's assume that this girl, whoever she is, is someone he likes." Doreen flung her free arm out. "Why do you care?"

"_I..."_

Doreen stared at the phone, coming to her own realization. "I get it! Because you actually _do_ like him. You want to kiss him and hug him and do other naughty things like finish each other's sentences and watching cartoons while being fed grapes!"

"_Ewww! No!"_ Karmi shouted. _"I don't want to do any of that!"  
_

"Nah, you're coming on too strong! I can hear it in your voice!"

Karmi looked away from the screen, a small blush on her cheeks.

"You like him. I _get_ it. I really do. And I really wish I could help you. But you're about seventy-four hundred miles in _that _direction," Doreen said, pointing towards the open window. "The things that I can do to help you are very limited."

"_...There is something you can do."  
_

"Hm?"

She picked up the phone from her desk, typing something out. _"I just sent you the address to Hiro's house. I need you to go over there and see what you can find out...without him knowing."  
_

Doreen got the text, but she was still staring at her friend. "You want me to play detective and find out information about this girl? In secret?"

"_Yeah."_

"So, behind his back?"

"_That is what that word means, yeah."_

"Knowing full well you could just ask him yourself?"

"_You're making this sound more nefarious than it should be."  
_

The wildlife expert slapped her phone down on the coffee table. "Karmi 'If I knew your middle name I would say it' Khan, I am disgusted..."

Karmi recoiled back.

"That you didn't ask me sooner!"

She let out a sigh of relief.

"I can totally do it! Incognito is my middle name!"

"_It's...Aileen."_

Doreen jumped up from the couch, running for her desk. "I'm gonna go get my Sherlock Holmes hat!"

"_Please don't."  
_

But she was already gone and back, her hair being covered by an aviator hood. "OK, I remembered that I don't actually have a Sherlock Holmes hat, but I got the next best thing. Don't worry; once I get off of work this afternoon, I'll go right over there and investigate."

"_OK, I'll probably be sleeping. Just let me know what you find out."_

"Sure thing." Doreen grabbed her jacket off of the back of the couch. "Oh, and Karmi?"

"_Yeah?"_

Karmi found the screen filled with her face and staring her down. "I'm only doing this because I'm your friend, OK? After I do this, regardless of what I find out, you're going to call him and talk to him. Capiche?"

"_Capiche."_

"Because I'm not getting involved in your couples' therapy."

"_Wait, hold-"  
_

"Gotta go, bye!" Doreen quickly hung up the call, putting the phone in her pocket. "Man, I better not end up working in a coffee shop as punishment for this secrecy or anything."

She stopped, her arm halfway through the sleeve of her jacket. "Wow, that was oddly specific."

She looked down at her watch, recoiling at the time. She pressed a finger to her headset and turned to the tree. "Come on, Tippy-Toe, ya lazy bum! We're gonna be late!"

The squirrel in the tree shook its head and let out a small squeak.

"It's Career Week! I can't go to work without my favorite buddy!"

It pulled its tail into its body, still wanting sleep.

"I'll let you chase some of the field trip kids around..."

Satisfied with that, it hopped down on each of the branches until it landed on Doreen's shoulder. Chuckling, she held out a chestnut for him. "Good to know that I can string you along with terrorizing munchkins at Yggdrasil. But we have a long day ahead of us! After work, we gotta go to this place Karmi told us to go to play detective! Some place called..."

Doreen checked her Notes.

"The Lucky Cat Cafe."

Tippy-Toe's head went back, squeaking uncontrollably.

"Oh, come on," she replied as they walked out the door. "What are the odds that an _actual _cat will be there?"

* * *

_That afternoon..._

"OK, show us what you got."

In the Periodic Cafe, Hiro had his laptop out, flanked by his friends. He had his sandwich in his mouth as he finished tapping on a few keys.

"Baymax, port over the data that we collected," he said, crumbs spewing everywhere.

As the robot pressed his finger to the top of the laptop, a weather map of San Fransokyo appeared. It slowly began to deposit dots all throughout the city. Wasabi leaned in, his sushi section dangling between his chopsticks. "Is that a Doppler map?"

Hiro popped the sandwich out of his mouth. "Sort of, yeah." He pressed the Enter key, and the map widened to fill the rest of the screen. "Baymax and I did some research into the strange anomaly that's been going around the city. This is a lightning map that covers the past two days. Here."

The city limits began to light up even more, the orange and yellow dots animating. "This isn't normal atmospheric behavior. All of these 'strikes' follow a pattern." He put his finger on the screen as the data finished compiling. "Look."

The others ducked in to see the dots start connecting together. "They're not random, like normal storms should be," Honey Lemon said. "It's almost like they're..."

"Following a path."

Fred put a greasy finger onto one of the paths. "Hey, that's my house! I remember the power went out on that day! Heathcliff had to throw out all of my Yaki Taco leftovers."

"And there's our apartment." Go Go motioned to a different part, hitting the dot to show the time stamp. "Yup. And that's when our power went out too."

"All at night. And there's four distinct paths. And there's only one place where all of those paths intersect."

Hiro hit the Enter button again, and the screen zoomed in to a single landmark.

"SFIT," Wasabi whispered.

"Yeah." He took a sip from his drink. "And since Granville told me that High Voltage didn't escape until last night, that rules them out. Besides, their equipment and electricity isn't strong enough to register on a NOAA map."

"How do you know that?" Go Go asked.

Hiro stared at her.

"Because you checked." She leaned back into her chair. "Because of course you checked."

Honey Lemon finished the rest of her salad, putting her fork down. "We could have helped you out, Hiro. You didn't have to do all this on your own."

"I didn't. Because there's another person that I had to rule out."

"Who?"

"Me."

The group turned to see that Peni was walking up to the table, a tray in her hands. "May I sit here?"

"Of course." Wasabi pulled another chair over, which she promptly sat in. "How are you liking your visit so far?"

"It is coming together. Remind me to thank Professor Granville for your various options for vegetarians." Peni pointed down at her burger. "Not necessarily a deciding factor when choosing an educational facility, but it is a good thing to know."

"Speaking of that, were you able to find out anything?"

"Hmm?" Go Go looked between the two of them. "Hiro, what did you have her do?"

"Nothing. It was my suggestion."

Hiro sat back in his chair. This was going to be interesting; he had kept Granville's promise to not mention anything about Peni's project. But she didn't know about her eavesdropping on the conversation. So, against his better judgment, they had decided to pool their resources to find out what was going on. Hiro did his superhero thing, and Peni did...whatever Peni did.

"Hiro, do you think it's really OK for...her to get involved?" Go Go said. "Shouldn't she be worrying about whatever Granville is hiding from us? We're probably better off on our own." She looked over at the girl. "No offense."

"I did not take any." Peni took a bite out of her burger. "However, Hiro agreed it would be best for me to find out information without bringing attention to the people on my team. Or at least try."

She dabbed her mouth with a napkin, frowning. "But certain people continue to be irritable toward me."

"Ooh! You wanna do a flashback? It can be like Issue #5 of _The Glove, _where he disguises it as a plot device!"

"No, she doesn't want to-"

Peni's face lit up immediately. "I would love to do that."

Go Go slapped her hand over her face. "Oh, for the love of-"

* * *

_Flashback to an hour ago…_

Peni took one last glance over the data being displayed on the console. At her cousin's insistence, she was trying to figure out if anything on her project (and Addy's) was capable of making the anomaly that was plaguing the city. She _knew_ S.P.I.D.E.R. wasn't responsible.

But Addy...

She looked behind her at the doorway. The rest of her team, including the Morbiuses, had left the premises for a small dinner break before completing their final few hours of work. Peni had let them leave, but stayed behind to do some digging.

Normally, this wasn't something she would do, but Hiro had gotten her thinking. In a way, she saw it as an opportunity; she had only heard briefly from her aunt about how Hiro was a troublemaker and a miscreant. Having been prim and proper all her life, she had found it very interesting.

Peni pressed a few buttons on the console. A few data files popped up, showing statistics about each of the projects. S.P.I.D.E.R. hadn't logged any mileage since she had landed in San Fransokyo. She pressed the other file, the one marked with Addy's name.

Its data came up...with no mileage as well. Huh. Weird. It appeared that Granville was telling the truth.

There was a third file, though. It was one that she didn't recognize, with no name attached to it. She pressed the screen and an error message came up.

"Restricted?"

Why was it restricted? This was _her_ project; Dr. Morbius made it clear that she would have access to all of the information she needed. What was this-

"What're you doing in here?"

Peni wheeled around to face the new occupant of the warehouse. "This is my workspace. It would be odd if I was _not_ in here."

Addy walked up to her, trying to look over her shoulder. "Is there a reason why you're looking into V.E.N.O.M.'s logistics?" Seeing Peni's surprised look, she tilted her head at her. "I know when people are accessing my file, Peni. Don't try to hide it."

"I was just curious," Peni said, closing the program behind her back. "I was looking for something unrelated."

"Uh huh."

She took the opportunity to step down from the platform, heading toward the door. "I think I will join Hiro for dinner. There was a vegetarian option in the Cafe that I wanted to partake in before-"

"You're trying to figure out the weird electrical interference, haven't you?"

She turned back around to face Addy. "Don't tell me you haven't."

"I have. And I can already tell you that it wasn't me or you."

"I realize that now. I was just factoring out all of the possible suspects."

"Suspects?" Addy leered at her. "Peni, no one had done anything other than dim some lights here and there. We don't know if there's anything nefarious going on."

"We are in San Fransokyo. Everything that happens out of the ordinary is nefarious. And plus Hiro believes that it originated from here."

"Oh, _Hiro_ said that now?" Addy crossed her arms. "Since when did you take advice from anyone below your intelligence quotient?"

"Addy, please do not be like that. He is my family. And while I was initially hesitant to open up, he is quite the capable individual. He and his friends have made me feel welcome."

"Yeah. Must be nice to have family to stay with. Or even talk to."

The tension was suddenly thick in the air, and it had nothing to do with electricity this time. Peni stepped slowly back toward her, looking incredulous. "Is that why you've been so distant since we've come here? Spending time in your own lab instead of bothering me every hour? Are you...jealous?"

"Me? Ha! I'm not jealous of your little cousin and his stupid friends! I don't need anybody but myself and V.E.N.O.M.! I'm going to get that grant, and I'm going to rub it in your stupid face!"

"...And is that why you're staying at Professor Granville's house? To gain a competitive advantage?"

Now it was Addy's turn to clam up. She stiffened her shoulders as she stomped over to Peni. "There's only one person who's going to get it, Peni, and that's going to be me. So you might as well shut everything down and just go back to Neo York!"

"Addy."

"You don't even _need_ it. You could get into anywhere you want because you're _that_ smart! Leave some of the slim pickings around for the rest of us!"

"_OK, hold up."_

* * *

The entire table turned to Go Go, who had her hands raised to stop Peni. "First of all...that was harsh. Second, why did Granville bring the both of you here if there was only room for one person?"

"I do not know." Peni looked down at her half-eaten burger. "Perhaps to encourage some healthy competition. But it has always been a competition between Addy and I, ever since she enrolled into the program as well."

"And that was going to be three," the Korean added, holding up the corresponding finger. "What the heck is all of that? 'S.P.I.D.E.R.'? 'V.E.N.O.M.'? What in the world did you bring with you?"

Peni looked at Hiro, who came to her rescue. "She's not allowed to talk about it. It's bad enough that she told me about it. We could get her into trouble."

"Yeah, well...trouble always seems to find us."

Almost as if on cue, the lights in the Cafe began to dim and flicker. In addition, Hiro's computer began to go on the fritz.

"Case in point," Go Go muttered.

"It's an earthquake!" Fred dived under the table. "Hide for your lives!"

"_There is no seismic activity associated with this electrical interference."_

After a few seconds, everything returned to normal. The scattering of other students in the Cafe started looking around to see what was the matter. Hiro plucked his laptop off of the computer and looked at it. "Good, it didn't lose all of the data. It..."

He saw the map that was still on the screen, brand new dots appearing right above their location.

"...It's updating."

Now there were six new heads around the computer, Peni ducking under Wasabi's arm to look. "Guys, it's here."

"I thought you said this thing only happened at night," Wasabi said.

"Yeah, so did I. It hasn't even hit sunset yet." Hiro shrunk the map to show only the campus grounds. "Must be some really secret stuff if this map can't even detect what it is."

"Well, Mr. Hamada, I'm afraid that the time for secrecy has come and gone."

All seven faces looked up to see Professor Granville was standing right in front of them, her eyes narrowed. Honey Lemon instinctively grabbed her purse, expecting the worse. "Professor, what's going on?"

"I need all of you to come with me. Immediately."

Hiro slowly got up from his chair. "Are we in trouble?"

"You are not. I require your expertise on an urgent matter."

Go Go pointed upward. "_That_ urgent matter?"

"You are correct, Ms. Tanaka. Everyone, with me."

* * *

A few minutes later, the group was heading straight toward Peni's warehouse. Granville was walking as quick as her legs would carry her, which turned out to be pretty fast. Not being afforded the long legs of Honey Lemon, it took three steps for Hiro to keep up with her two. "Professor, I didn't tell them. I swear."

"I know that you and Ms. Parker did not tell anyone else, which I appreciate." Granville stopped at the door and put in her passcode. "However, we are at a point where things cannot simply be ignored. There is an issue that will require all of your concentration to solve, and it is best that I pull the best team I have to solve it."

Fred apparently looked confused, because Wasabi shook his head at him. "She's talking about us."

"Ooooh."

Granville grabbed the door handle, but paused and turned back to the group. "I need to be assured by the four of you (pointing to the four behind Hiro) that you will no speak to what I'm about to show you. What is inside is considered confidential until otherwise stated. Understood?"

All four nodded.

"Very well. Come inside."

She threw open the door, and the group followed her through it. Right in the middle was Peni's robot, the one that Hiro had seen from the vent. Instead of standing tall, like before, it was bending down on its knees, the chest cavity open to show the cockpit, shoulder pads bent back to allow more room.

Hiro _was_ surprised to see a second robot right behind it, very much similar to Peni's. However, it was primarily back and white, a little thinner around the wrists and ankles. Instead of yellow eyes, they were light green. He heard Fred let out a squeal of delight somewhere to his left. He smiled slightly, knowing this was the kind of thing that Fred dreamed about. Dr. Morbius was standing looking at something in it, but seeing the group approach, he shut the overhead door and started walking toward them.

"Grace, what are you doing? These students are not authorized-"

"To be frank, Michael, I don't give a damn about authorization at this point," Granville said as she reached him. Even though she had only a couple of inches on him, it looked like she was another robot towering over him. "This institute has had some strange happenings going on ever since you've arrived, and I intend on finding out what's going on, whether it is with your help or not."

Hiro heard a low whistle come from behind him. "Man, I don't think I've ever seen her this upset," Wasabi whispered.

"Clearly you haven't seen her deal with me," the teen genius responded.

Granville waved her arm at the group. "These are my best students. They are going to look over your operation and make sure there is nothing _nefarious_ going on. You and the rest of your team will assist them in any way they need. Is that understood?"

The doctor glared over her shoulder at the students. "Grace, you really don't think we had something to do with it, do you?"

"Well, considering the sort of things you have in your past..." Granville scooted closer to his face. "I'm not going to rule anything out."

He looked like he was going to say something in response, but relented instead. "Fine. I'll just excuse myself then."

"Oh no, you will not." She pointed back toward the group. "Mr. Frederickson, please stand by the door. Do not let anyone in or out of this facility."

"Oooh! Guard duty!" Fred scampered off to the door, where he stood at mock attention.

The next twenty minutes were spent with Wasabi, Go Go, and Hiro going over the diagnostics and robots with a fine-toothed comb. Honey Lemon, while not specializing in the inner machinations of the oversized creations, instead spent her time in front of the console, checking fluid and power levels for possible discrepancies. Fred and Baymax were busy at the door, having a heated thumb war, which Fred predictably lost every time.

Addy and Michael's son, who had been in the facility but not interjected when they had entered, were at her robot, taking turns giving death glares to Peni. Hiro, stationed next to Honey Lemon, bent over to Peni. "They don't seem that happy."

"No. They think it's a waste of time."

"Both?"

"Yes. They would much rather focus on V.E.N.O.M."

Hiro wanted to ask Peni what that meant, but she was already ahead of him. "Variable-Enhanced Nano-Operation Machine. It runs on similar technology as S.P.I.D.E.R., however the Sym Engine inside doesn't have the same restrictions as mine."

"Who made it? Your dad?"

"No." Peni stared at her counterpart. "She did."

He leaned a little more toward her. "Peni, she's your direct competition for this. Do you think-"

"No. I have known Addy a long time, and she is constantly frustrating, but I do not believe she would do anything like this."

His eyes fell to the doctor, still deep in conversation with Granville. "And him?"

Peni followed his eyes. "What would he have to gain from the project's failure?"

"True."

Hiro's eyes darted back toward the black and white robot and saw something peculiar. Michael's son had their back to them, but the gray shine of a mechanical square was at the base of his neck. It also seemed to light up mysteriously, just like Peni's.

"Michael's son isn't a pilot, right?"

"He is not."

"Then what does he have on his neck?"

"He has nothing. He is not authorized to work on any other projects other than ours. It is against the-"

Peni then followed his finger right to where he was pointing and widened her eyes. "What _is_ that?"

"I don't know." Hiro hopped down off the platform. "But I'm sure as heck going to find out."

He wasn't...because as soon as his feet hit the ground, alarms started blaring all over the place. The scientists started running every which way, trying to figure out the reason for the noise.

"I didn't do it!" Fred yelled from the door.

Honey Lemon ran her finger over the screen in front of her. "I think it's something happening downtown."

"Put it on screen, Ms. Rodriguez."

The Latina pressed a button, and every single television on the walls lit up to see two very familiar faces at the downtown shopping area. They both had bright blonde hair, dressed up in clothing straight out of the eighties. They had a metal orb floating between them as the ATM in the background was spewing out cash uncontrollably.

"Huh." Go Go jumped down from the arm of S.P.I.D.E.R., clapping her hands together. "Guess we know where they went."

The picture went to the top corner of the screens, and Bluff Dunder came into view behind his desk. _"It appears that we've interrupted my very important Fruit Talk to give you some breaking news! The shocking duo of High Voltage is currently 'bolting' around the city, collecting as much money as they can."_ He pointed off-screen, probably at one of the cameramen. _"See what I did there?"_

Dr. Morbius came up behind the group, who had all gathered on the platform. "Grace, this is the perfect opportunity to show what Peni and S.P.I.D.E.R. are capable of. I can have her out the door and there in no time...provided you're finished with your wild goose chase."

"I am not," Granville replied, "But I do wish to see what she can do. Ms. Tanaka, Mr. Calloway, were you able to find any irregularities?"

"Nope," Wasabi responded, wiping his hands. "Everything seems to be in working condition."

"Yeah, the engine is something straight out of a sci-fi film," Go Go added. "Fancy future tech, but it's good to go."

"Very well. Ms. Parker."

"I'm ready."

Hiro hadn't even noticed she had walked off, but as she came back into view, her attire was entirely different. She was dressed in a full-body suit, mostly blue and white with a wide red stripe serving as a belt around her waist. She stepped up to her robot, hopping from the ground to the arm to the cockpit in one fell swoop.

"Oh my goodness, it's like I'm watching _Kentucky Kaiju _all over again!"

"...Mr. Frederickson, you are suppose to be watching the door."

"No can do, Professor G! Giant mechas piloted by Hiro's cousin takes priority."

"Excuse me." Dr. Morbius moved in front of them, wildly pressing buttons. "Systems are good to go. Addy, you're on standby in case things go south. Peni, when the doors open...you are ready for your exit."

"Doors?"

The entire back wall started to come apart, letting the dying light of the sunset shine into the building. Peni closed the cockpit and turned S.P.I.D.E.R. around, stepping on the barrier between hard floor and soft grass. The robot's arm raised its arm, and a white liquid came out of it, propelling off in the same direction.

"Baymax, can you do that?" Fred poked at his wrists.

"_I cannot."_

Dr. Morbius clicked a lever upward. "Checking comm levels. Peni, respond."

"_Finally! I can't believe I'm out of that stupid place!"_

The unbridled joy coming out of her mouth was something Hiro had never heard in her short time in San Fransokyo. He even heard some sort of techno music coming through the speakers. He looked to his right to see Go Go softly bobbing her head to the beat. Seeing him, she shrugged her shoulders. "What? I'm allowed to enjoy things."

"Ms. Parker, need I remind you that you are on official business here." Hiro saw the smallest of smiles on Granville's face. "Do keep that in mind."

"_Oh. Right. Sure. Doc, how's everything looking?"_

"Well so far, but your power output seems to be lacking a little bit. Michael, can you check the cells?"

Nothing.

"Michael?"

Dr. Morbius pulled his head up to the right. "Michael, I need you to-"

Two other workers glanced between them at the chair that was supposed to be occupied by his son, but it was empty.

"...Where's Michael?"

Hiro looked behind him...to see the exit that Fred was suppose to be blocking suddenly shutting.

"Uh oh."

"_Hiro, my sensors are detecting abnormally large electrical disturbances. They are similar in size to the ones that we collected over the course of our day."  
_

He gasped as he looked at Baymax's viewscreen, the dots coming up on the weather map...and heading straight for downtown.

"It's him."

He wheeled around at the rest of the group, mirroring their shocked faces.

"It's Michael."

A large beep rang out, and one of the workers on the far wall turned his chair to face the platform. "Dr. Morbius, we have another anomaly heading toward High Voltage's location. And it's going to beat Peni there."

The group looked up at the camera filming the scene of High Voltage and the police in a stand-off. All of a sudden, something crashed on top of the farthest police car.

A large, light blue something...crackling with electricity.

And inside the makeshift hard-light apparition was a boy with half-shaven hair, a pair of goggles on his eyes...and an evil smile on his face.

"_Ohhh no."_

* * *

_One minute earlier…_

"Mama, it's like they never left! Our adoring fans want us even more!"

"Juniper, do be a doll and get this cash loaded! We have a lot of catching up to do!"

High Voltage continued to throw bags of cash into their car...or one of them was. Barb, the mother, was doing most of the work, while her daughter Juniper was pandering to the crowd.

"But Mama, I wanna talk to the people some more!"

All of a sudden, four police cars came out from the corner, skidding to a halt a few feet away. The officers piled out and aimed their guns at High Voltage, among them Chief Cruz. "Stop where you are, you two! You're under arrest!"

"Oooh, is this the new guy that everyone's been talking about?" Barb sized him up, nodding her head. "You sure are a looker!"

Cruz's focus didn't waver. "I said put your hands up!"

Juniper somersaulted to her mother, and the orb they used for their powers started to power up. "It's too bad it has to be this way! We could've been a great-"

The orb suddenly fell to the ground with a clunk.

"Huh?"

And then something else fell onto the ground. Or a car, rather.

"Ahh!"

All of the sirens began to dwindle in volume as the man stood up to his full height on top of the police vehicle. He was wearing a black leather jacket and black pants, a pair of goggles over his eyes. On both of his palms were squares of mechanical tech, projecting what appeared to be an aura of light blue electricity around him. Near his head area was an animal face, a lizard or reptile from the looks of it.

"Hey!" Juniper yelled. "There's only room for one shock villain around here, bub! This is our turf!"

"I'm not here to be a villain." The voice was gruff and hard as he got into a battle stance. "I'm here to be a hero. And you can call me by my codename..."

* * *

"_Morbius!"_

"Oh my goodness."

The doctor slammed his fist into the panel at the sound of his son's voice on the monitor. "The electrical interference. The mysterious outages all throughout San Fransokyo and Neo York. That was him the whole time. How did I not see this sooner?"

"Yeah, I'm also a little curious as to how you didn't know your own son was building a demonic-looking electrical suit under your nose."

He turned toward Go Go with a sneer. "You have a lot of sass, you know that?"

"Frankly, Dr. Morbius, I think that she's entitled to all of the sass she wants," Granville interjected. "What do you know about it?"

"Give me ten seconds and we'll all know."

She turned to Hiro, who had pushed himself forward and started rapidly tapping buttons. "Peni mentioned something about a protected file she couldn't access in the system. Yup, there it is."

Three files appeared in a projection in front of them: one for Peni, one for Addy, and one unmarked. The doctor stared as Hiro did his thing. "Young man, I highly doubt you can crack this system. I designed it to-"

"_Access granted."_

Hiro cracked his knuckles in front of him, grinning. "Yeah, about that."

Honey Lemon poked at the screen, and several files showed up, including an outline of what looked like some sort of suit. "According to the file, it's a mechanical operator rig, equipped with some sort of built-in ionic utility system. The name is...M.O.R.B.I.U.S."

"What's with all of the acronyms? I can barely keep everything straight!"

Ignoring Fred's outburst, Go Go looked at the data from the file. "Huh. It looks like it feeds off of electricity, and when it travels, it bursts out the excess. That would explain the outages through the city; he's been using it to travel around and test it at night. Look. There's logs of when he came into here and used the suit. They match up with those paths Hiro plotted. And the last test was...right before Professor Granville brought us over here."

"And it also goes back to last week, when Ms. Parker was visiting Neo York," Granville added.

"That's when he joined with us."

They looked at Dr. Morbius, his long black hair shaking along with his head. "I-I needed an electrical engineer to replace one that had left my team. I knew he was young, but he was the best I could do on such short notice. I had no idea..."

"There's a problem."

Wasabi pointed to the neck part of the suit, expanding the frame to enhance it. "It's not fully tested. With an abnormal large amount of electricity, it could overload the suit. It looks like he's doing fine for now, but with High Voltage being there...he could possibly get too much electricity for the thing to take."

"We're going out there."

Hiro saw Addy walk up, wearing her black-and-white full body suit. She hopped up to her robot and strapped herself in. "If what you're saying is true, Peni's gonna need backup."

"Addy, your system hasn't been properly tested yet."

"I don't care! We can do this!" She turned V.E.N.O.M., and without a second glance, sprinted off into the darkness.

Growling, Dr. Morbius brought up two windows, each with a heartbeat sensor and rapidly moving waves. "Both of your vitals are stable. Peni, what is your ETA?"

* * *

"I'm here, Doc..."

S.P.I.D.E.R. swung from her last web, landing softly on the top of the nearest tree. Peni looked through her window to survey the scene. "But we have a problem. Michael's here, and I don't even know what he's wearing. Whatever it is, it's tingling all of the hairs on my body."

"_It is because Michael is responsible for the outages, Ms. Parker."  
_

"Really?"

"_Yes, and until we know more information, your orders are clear,"_ Dr. Morbius's voice came through the comm. _"Subdue the villains, and get Michael to come back here. Addy will be arriving shortly as backup; she can provide crowd control."_

"Gotcha." The robot hopped down from the tree and landed on the ground. She took a running leap and jettisoned off toward the commotion, loudly announcing her arrival as she stopped on the roof of the bank. She switched over to her loudspeaker as she pointed at High Voltage. _"Halt, evil-doers! Give yourselves up, or else you will face my wrath!"_

"Oh my goodness." Chief Cruz slapped his hand over his face. "I thought we got rid of all of those stupid heroes."

_"I heard that!"_

* * *

"It's...like she's an entirely different person."

Dr. Morbius couldn't help but smile at Hiro's dumbfounded expression. "Peni is most comfortable in the field. When she is in the lab or not working, she's much more subdued and reserved."

"Yeah," Go Go quipped. "We noticed."

* * *

"Get out of here!" Michael yelled at the giant red robot. "I'm handling this!"

"_Michael." _S.P.I.D.E.R. hopped down onto the street, right between a very confused High Voltage and the police. _"Let me do my job. The job you helped create with me."_

"No! I'm doing this! I'm going to prove to everyone that I'm better than you are! That you don't deserve anything you've gotten!" Michael threw his arms out, a stray bolt flying into a nearby building. "You had your chance! I'm going to get that grant, and I'm going to prove that I'm a hero..."

He balled his fists together, building up energy. "And if I have to put you down to do that, so be it!"

Barb, unbeknownst to everyone else, started slowly edging toward her car. "It...sound like you kids have a lot of things to iron out. We're just gonna get out of your way. Juniper! Five, six, seven, eight!"

High Voltage both leaped into the car and revved it up, pressing the gas to push past two of the police cars. It turned the corner, dodging fire from the police.

"We're off, Juniper!" Barb was craning her neck to look back down at the action. "We're gonna get back on track!"

Yeah...about that.

_Wham!_

Correction, they _would've_ gotten back on track had it not been for the second robot crashing down on the hood of the car.

"_Hey, guys!"  
_

"Jiminy Christmas, Mama!" Juniper yelled as V.E.N.O.M.'s head came down to inspect them. "How many of these things are there?"

Meanwhile, Michael and Peni were continuing their stare down. Unfortunately, they also had the added audience of the police, who were now training their guns on them. "Freeze!" Chief Cruz shouted. "All of you!"

"I don't need you cops!" Michael slammed his hand into the ground, causing a shockwave to burst out. All of the lights on them burst, making the police duck to avoid getting hurt.

"I don't need any of you!"

He sent out a bolt at S.P.I.D.E.R., who dodged it just in the neck of time. Peni closed her eyes, the energy starting to creep through the shell of her robot.

"Doc, we have a problem. Like a real problem. Your son's gone _loco_. I can't-Ahh!"

The second bolt came out of nowhere, hitting her and causing her to slam into a tree. Michael grinned like a maniac, another bolt at the ready.

"And I don't need you, Peni," he whispered. "I'm going to show everyone just how much of a fraud you are, just like your father. My dad and I will finally recognize me for the geniuses we are, and not waste our energy on such a degenerate lowlife like yourself."

* * *

"_If only he could hear me now."_

The group stood in shocked silence and they heard the fight unfold through Peni's comm. Not even Fred could come up with a joke to lighten the mood.

"He's gone crazy." Go Go glanced at the M.O.R.B.I.U.S. file. "Those goggles are connected to his suit. It must be stimulating the limbic system in his brain. His emotions are out of control."

Dr. Morbius had his mouth hanging open, his fingers shaking on the keys. He looked down, unaware of all of the rest of his team staring at him. "I...I didn't know. What have I done?"

Granville, silent as of now, pressed a button on the console. "Ms. Brock, Ms. Parker is in need of your assistance immediately."

"_On it. Should be there in a few minutes. These two don't drive particularly well."  
_

The dean turned to Hiro. "Perhaps, Mr. Hamada, it would be best for you to take your friends and leave."

He was surprised. Why would she want them to leave now, of all times? "But Professor-"

"I'm sure you have other..._more important_ things to do right now."

Oh yeah. That.

"Go."

The rest of the group got the hint as well, and with Baymax shuffling after them, they made toward the exit. Satisfied, Granville turned to the doctor. "Michael, we need to focus. Whatever happened in the past that your son is fixated upon is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is that everyone returns here in one piece."

Taking a deep breath, he unhinged his hands from the counter. "Yes. You're...you're right." He closed his eyes and pushed a window over to her. "Can you monitor Addy while I monitor Peni?"

"Of course."

The two started typing rapidly, the doctor muttering under his breath. "What I would not give for an appearance from Big Hero 6 right now."

"You will probably have to give up nothing," Granville replied. She glanced behind her at the exit. "I have a feeling we'll be hearing from them soon enough..."

* * *

_Meanwhile, a handful of miles away…_

"OK, here we are!"

The girl stood proudly in front of the establishment, ignoring the weird looks she was getting from people passing by. Yes, that's the sort of look you would get when you had a squirrel on your shoulder.

"Hmm. Our first obstacle, Tippy-Toe." Doreen peered at the sign beside the door. It was a standard "No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service" sign, but written in the fine print near the "No Animals" was an additional note: "Especially Not Squirrels".

"That is indeed a problem, but nothing we can't solve!" She pointed to the awning above the Cafe. "Go get yourself up there and keep a lookout for anything suspicious."

Tippy-Toe squeaked at her.

"Look, I don't know! There could be ninjas or robots or ninja robots or something! I don't know what Hiro makes on his spare time."

Begrudgingly, the squirrel jumped from her shoulder to the light post and over to the awning, taking a position right next to the Mankei-Neko cat.

"Cool beans." Doreen cracked her neck. "Time to get some info."

As she walked into the cafe, Tippy-Toe turned to the ceramic cat to his right. Strange, it looked almost lifelike underneath the sunset. He turned to his left...to see the _actual_ ceramic cat, the eyes not moving at all.

Wait a minute...

He creaked his head back in the other direction...as the actual cat began sizing him up.

Doreen began to survey her surroundings inside, the quaint little cafe's colors popping in her eyes. Because of the time of day, and the sun just starting to set, there were only a few people at the tables, and the woman behind the counter was reading a magazine, her finger tapping on the counter to the beat of the music. She looked when she had walked in and put on her best retail smile. "Hello there! Welcome to the Lucky Cat Cafe!"

"Hi there!" She looked around as she walked to the counter. "Sorry, I've never been here before. Karmi never made it a point to bring me around."

_Dang it,_ she thought, physically wincing. _Wasn't suppose to mention her._

The woman started sizing her up. "You're a friend of Karmi's? Where do you know her from?"

"I worked at _Gramercy_ with her for a while. And then she left town."

"Yes, it was all very unfortunate. Hiro was so torn up about it."

"Very." Doreen started strolling in front of the pastry display, looking at the walls. "Maybe he used the opportunity to find a new person to fawn over."

"You don't seem to know my nephew very well." The woman was staring at her curiously. "Although you do look very familiar. Did you hang out with Hiro and them at the bowling alley?"

"I was, but I wanna ask about something else."

"Oh?"

Doreen put her hand about chest height. "I need info about this kid you might know. Young girl, black messy hair, about yay high?"

"You mean Peni? What about her?"

The wildlife expert was getting increasingly upset. It turns out that her detective skills weren't really up to par. Or...existent, really.

"Doreen."

She stared over at the woman. "I...don't remember me telling you my name."

"You didn't need to," she replied. "So why don't you just tell me what's going on?"

Doreen's fists started shaking at her sides. She had her eyes closed and her hood almost tumbled off of her hair. "Oh my God, I can't take this any more!" She slammed her hands into the counter, staring into the woman's eyes.

"_Karmi wanted me to see what was going on with Hiro and in addition find out who Peni was and I was originally against the whole thing but Karmi is my friend and I wanted to do this to ease her mind so I was trying to be all sneaky-like and I'm not really good at being all sneaky-like in case you haven't noticed. Please don't hurt me I was just trying to do the right thing and find out if Hiro was dating someone!"_

She gasped, stretching out the last part to get it all in one breath. She couldn't hear the squirrel hanging over the awning and looking inside, as well as the tiniest slap over his forehead.

"Doreen."

Aunt Cass hadn't moved through her entire diatribe, ignoring the customers giving them looks of confusion. She leaned forward, beckoning her to come closer.

"I think there's been some sort of misunderstanding."

Doreen looked up into her eyes.

"Peni's not his girlfriend."

"...Say wut?"

Outside, Tippy-Toe climbed back up, shaking his head. That...could've gone better.

"_Meow."_

The squirrel looked up at Mochi, who was giving him a look of understanding. He brought a claw up to his ear and twirled it around.

Tippy-Toe nodded emphatically.

A sudden crash caused both of the animals to turn their heads down the street. A large lightning bolt came down somewhere in the park area, followed by the sounds of sirens.

Curious, both of them titled their heads to the right at the same time. Both of them had lived too long in the city to know that something was up...and that something wasn't anything good.

* * *

_Back to the action!_

S.P.I.D.E.R. slammed into the ground, making a large trench before landing at the bottom of a nearby tree.

"_Ow."  
_

Peni jabbed at her control panel inside. "Great, I only have a few web cartridges left. Not that _that's_ doing me any good. And power's low, too. Might have to tap into the reserves-"

Another bolt hit her chest, causing her to grunt in pain.

"I didn't think we were done, Peni."

She brought her robot up to its feet as Michael stepped between the trees, some of the leaves catching fire from the energy. She switched her outward comm back on. _"Michael, we can talk about this. That suit...whatever you're wearing...it's __messing with your mind. Please__. Let me help you."  
_

"Oh, I don't need help. I've never felt better." He brought his arms up, two makeshift hands stretching out from them. "Although I can't say the same about you in a second."

"Too bad you'll be in for a shock!"

A plume of flame came in from her right, hitting Michael and causing him to fly off out of sight.

"_Huh?"_

Peni looked through her window to see six new arrivals onto the scene. Six very familiar arrivals.

_"Oh my God! It's Big Hero 6!"  
_

"In the flesh!" Fred yelled, pumping his arms. "Or...in the suits. That would probably be better."

"Flame Jumper," Hiro said, hoping Fred would remember his earlier order about using codenames. "Not now."

"_OMG OMG OMG!" _The robot started rapidly going from member to member, fawning over each of them until stopping at the teen genius. _"I love you guys! You're my heroes! And you're here! This is awesome."_

Hiro smiled for a second. Hearing her "voice" be excited about them was great, but the gravity of the situation was still there. He had to be careful; it was still his cousin in there after all. "Greetings!" he yelled in his superhero voice. "And who might you be?"

"_I'm...ummm..."_ The robot put a long gray finger to its helmet. _"I don't really have a name. If you guys want to give me one, that'd be great!"_

"Incoming!"

Wasabi yelled just in the nick of time; the group dodged out of the way to avoid the incoming tree. Michael stepped out from the bushes, the energy palpable in the air. "Oh look. Big Hero 6 is finally here! Finally! Some _real_ people to fight!"

Go Go started revving her wheels, the edges digging into the soft ground. "Bring it, tough guy!"

"_We have to be careful."_

Hiro looked behind him to see S.P.I.D.E.R. readying up, Peni back in her serious mode. _"He's not right. I need to bring him in as unharmed as we can."  
_

"Yeah, you should tell him that, because I don't think he's going to cooperate," Go Go muttered.

Honey Lemon popped a few shiny silver orbs out of her purse. "I have some aluminum that we can use to shorten out his suit and send the power into the ground. We just need to hold him down!"

Michael tapped both of the squares on his hands, and almost instantly the aura surrounding him started to expand. "That's not happening."

Wasabi's blades started to flicker. He looked down at them, a little surprised. "Umm...guys?"

"Yeah, we noticed." Hiro had to physically grab onto Baymax's shoulders since his magnetic locks had been deactivated. "He's siphoning all of the power out of our suits. We're not going to last much longer."

"_Michael!"  
_

A black mass came from their right and grabbed hold of Michael's aura arm. It was V.E.N.O.M., finally caught up from taking care of High Voltage, but she did look a little worse for wear. There were scorch marks all over her torso, and a lot of the white on her robot was scratched.

"_You need to stop!"_ It picked Michael up off of the ground, holding him in front of her. _"You're out of your mind! You need to listen to reason!"_

"Oh yeah?" Despite being held, he was still grinning maniacally. "You sure seemed to listen to reason when I said I could get you that grant."

There was stunned silence through the entirety of the group. Inside S.P.I.D.E.R., Peni's mouth was hanging open. "You...worked with him to sabotage me?"

"_Peni, listen to me."_ A private comm link was opened on her display, the voice on the other line shaking. _"He said he could help me. I told him to shove it. I said I could do it on my own."_

"Aww, no need to be so secretive."

Both Addy and Peni realized too late that the line had been switched to public, allowing everyone else to hear their conversation. Michael snapped his fingers, mocking them. "I can control electricity, remember? Which means I can control your systems. Which means..."

He turned his head toward V.E.N.O.M., holding both of his hands out. "I have you right where I want you."

Hiro gasped as the energy started to build up again, his brain now starting to be in physical pain. "He's going to get all of Addy's power! We have to-"

"_Stop!"_

S.P.I.D.E.R. leaped forward, but the robot arm was stopped by the aura that Michael had built up. The combination of both of their tech caused the energy to overflow…

And explode.

BOOOOOM!

An Earth-shattering explosion rang through the park, causing everyone to be thrown back viciously. Hiro felt his back slam into a large boulder, careening into the ground with a thud.

"Uggghh..."

He felt the blood in his mouth before it fell into his visor. Trying to gather his thoughts, he saw to his immediate right that Baymax had landed on his back, the low battery lights flashing on his chest. He didn't know where anyone else was, but he hoped they were OK.

"_We are almost complete!"_

Addy's comm rang through the smoke, but it was definitely not her voice. It sounded more demonic and deeper than before, and it sent a chill down Hiro's bruised spine.

He heard the footstep before seeing it. A black foot went right in front of him, and Hiro looked up to see the green-tinted lenses of V.E.N.O.M. staring back at him. But that wasn't the worst part.

The entire robot was surrounded by Michael's electric aura, with the boy himself seeming strapped to the chest piece. He was no longer conscious, but the suit was clearly still powered.

"_Assimilation."  
_

The smoke cleared to show S.P.I.D.E.R. to his left, trying to get up to its feet. How Peni still had any power in her robot was unknown, but that was the least of his concerns.

"What?"

"_It's...V.E.N.O.M.'s fail-safe," _Peni's voice said. _"It's part of the programming. In the case of an intrusion into the system, it locks down and attempts to absorb the offender into its mainframe. She had never tested it before...because in theory, it also shuts down the pilot."_

One of the arms shot out and grabbed S.P.I.D.E.R. by the neck and pulled it closer to the monster. Hiro couldn't even muster up any energy to shout a warning.

"_We no longer need you, but we will take your energy."  
_

The lights on Peni's robot began to drain in power, but the screams coming from inside were evident even through the metal cockpit. Hiro could do nothing but watch as the Michael/V.E.N.O.M./Addy...thing… start to physically grow bigger.

"_Soon, we will have all we need. And you will not be there to-Ah!"  
_

Two discs, two pink balls, and a large flame came from over him and hit the monster right in the chest. It did just enough for it to drop S.P.I.D.E.R. and stumble back.

"_No matter. We will find more...and then we will take what is ours!"_

The monster leaped out of sight beyond the trees, but Hiro could only focus on the smoking robot in front of him. He didn't even react as the rest of the team ran up, Wasabi placing a hand on his shoulder.

"You all right, Hiro?"

"Peni."

He didn't remember standing up, but he stumbled over to the cockpit. He put his ear to the chest, hoping to hear something. Anything.

"Peni!"

He grabbed the door and pulled with all of his might. Luckily, the diminished power made it an easier task.

On the other hand, he wasn't prepared for what was inside.

Peni was lying in her seat, her head still fastened to the back console through the port in her neck. Her eyes were closed, and her appendages were twitching every couple of seconds. Hiro, fearing the worst, took off his glove and put two fingers to her neck.

"…I have a pulse."

* * *

All three windows had ERROR messages on them. Granville and Dr. Morbius stared in horror as the beeping continued to permeate throughout the facility.

"Contact has been lost with all three subjects, Sir," one of the other members mumbled. "All systems are offline."

Granville took a slow step back. Her finger shaking, she brought her phone to her ear, tracing the applications in the way that Hiro had shown her. She heard the ringing in her ear only briefly before the other line picked up.

"_Professor._

She stepped away from the platform, dropped her voice to a low whisper. "Ms. Tanaka, you need to bring both Ms. Parker and S.P.I.D.E.R. back to the school immediately."

"_Are you out of your mind? I don't even know if Peni's going to make it anywhere much less there in one piece. She's barely hanging on right now."  
_

"Ms. Tanaka, this is not for debate. Her project cannot fall into the wrong hands."

"_She needs a hospital."  
_

Granville's eyes closed. "She can be treated here. I assure you that. Can you transport her safely, yes or no?"

She heard her student sigh. It took a few moments, but she finally responded. _"I think so. We can take her in S.P.I.D.E.R. Hiro's checking Baymax's power levels to see if he can make the flight, but it looks like he can."_

"Use whatever way you can. I will see you shortly."

_"Professor?"  
_

The dean paused, taking note of the Korean's angry tone. "Yes?"

_"When we get back there…you owe us a damn explanation."_

The call cut off before she could respond, leaving the dial tone in her ears. Granville pursed her lips at her phone.

"Yes. I suppose I do."

She pressed a button on her phone and once again listened for the pick-up. "I hope that you are a light sleeper..."

* * *

"Ugh. I hate that I'm a light sleeper."

The girl pressed the other pillow to her head, trying to drown out the ringing of her phone. After the twentieth ring, she finally relented, pausing to only look at the time before answering.

"It's six in the morning. This had better be good."

"_It is!"_

Karmi, to her surprise, saw Doreen on her screen, her body bent over on the sidewalk in an effort to catch her breath. "Are you OK, Doreen?"

_"Oh yeah, I'm good," _she replied, still breathing rather hard. _"You know...running away from a giant attack on the city, everything on the fritz. The usual."_

"Huh?"

"_Geez, don't you get news wherever you are? This is blowing up. No pun intended." _Doreen took a swig from a to-go cup that Karmi instantly recognized as one from the Lucky Cat Cafe. _"Oh man, this is good stuff! You never told me that Hiro's aunt made such great coffee!"  
_

"Doreen. The point. Now."

Her phone vibrated three times, signifying the arrival of separate messages on it. She pressed the green button to see a familiar sight.

"I've already seen this before. Hiro as a baby."

"_Did you see the **whole** thing, though?"_

Karmi pressed her fingers together on the picture to shrink it down, and the rest of the photo came into view.

And her breath caught in her throat.

There wasn't just _one_ baby. There were two.

"_Karmi, they're not dating."  
_

She scrolled quickly over to the next. There they were: Tadashi at the top, Hiro on the left...and Peni on the right. All looking younger. All looking happy.

Karmi swiped to see the last picture. It was very recent, dated to a couple days prior. It was Aunt Cass smiling from behind Hiro and the girl at the stairs of SFIT. Both of them had different expressions on their faces, but they had the same unkempt tuft of black hair. _Exactly the same._

There was no mistaking it now. She didn't need Doreen's voice to say it to realize it.

"_...They're family."  
_

* * *

**AUTHOR'S NOTE: **And now you know why this chapter took so long. XD

Holy smokes, there's a _lot_ going on in this chapter. I applaud you if you did make it this far. Turns out that you shouldn't really introduce the main action of the story halfway through said story.

I think that in an effort to get the plot wrangled down, I may have bloated a few things in this chapter, which is fine for the most part. I don't know what the final word count is going to be, but it will be the most I've written for a chapter by far. And it's funny; there wasn't really a lot that I could find to cut. It's all pretty important.

Yes, even Tippy-Toe and Mochi are important. Don't try to convince me otherwise.

The next chapter will be shorter, I swear. Peni's life is dependent on it.

Read and review, if you like. Until next time, everyone.


	6. Arachnophobia

_**Disclaimer:** Big Hero 6 is owned by Disney Animation. Peni is owned by two people who are much, much better than I._

* * *

_**Chapter 5 – Arachnophobia**_

"_I was so worried about you! There's been a ton of outages going on around the city! Are you coming home?"  
_

"No, Granville is keeping the campus locked down for now. Doesn't want to take any chances."

"_Are you OK, Hiro? You sound like you're catching a cold."  
_

Hiro sniffed, his head sitting in the palm of his hand. "I'm...just tired, Aunt Cass. It's been a long day today."

"_I'm sure," _she replied. _"I haven't had anyone in the Cafe in a while. And I'm almost out of raspberry scones. I wish I could say I didn't eat them all, but..."  
_

He let out a small laugh. He could just imagine Aunt Cass sitting in the kitchen, bowl after bowl of dough being made with reckless abandon. It's what she did when she was stressed out; if only he could be there feasting on the products of her labor…

"_How's Peni doing? She must be scared about what's going on."_

And this was the part that he was afraid about when he called her. After seeing the nine missed calls from her. He knew she would probably want to talk to her.

But that wasn't going to happen.

"She's...uh...keeping busy." Hiro peered around the corner from his sitting position. The doorway to the facility hadn't opened since he had walked out to call her. "Fred's probably reading her comics. She likes those a lot."

"_Oh, good. It looked like she was warming up to everyone before. I'm so glad."_

"I should probably go. Granville wants everyone to keep their electronics charged just in case the power goes out for longer. I'll let you know when I'm on my way home."

"_OK. Stay safe. I love you."  
_

"Love you, too."

Hiro had desperately tried to keep his voice steady, but his goodbye to Aunt Cass caught him at just the wrong time. But he ended the call anyway, the hand holding the phone hitting the ground.

The last hour had passed by in a crazy blur. He didn't even know how everyone had gotten back to SFIT. He vaguely remembered holding onto Baymax as he flew through the air, holding S.P.I.D.E.R. in his arms. They had strapped Peni as much as they could into the cockpit to not injure her further.

They had just been about to make their exit when the cops came, led by Chief Cruz barking out orders left and right. The officers had always been a little hesitant to follow his direction because of their relationship with the team, but today...today not even Hiro was having any of it.

And apparently neither was Honey Lemon, because in the middle of Cruz's outburst, she threw an ice orb so hard into the grass that he thought it would dig through the earth and jettison out off the other side of the Earth. Feet frozen to the ground, they could do nothing as Big Hero 6 flew off and headed straight for SFIT.

After landing back at the facility, Granville and Dr. Morbius had taken Peni immediately to diagnose her. The team then departed to try to make their reappearance as civilians. Hiro had stayed behind to grab Baymax's charger from his lab to recharge him, as his batteries had been almost completely drained in the fight.

And then he noticed the aforementioned nine missed calls from Aunt Cass.

It was lucky that whatever Morbius had thrown at them hadn't shortened it out entirely, because he had been going through phones rapidly, and he was running out of excuses to tell Aunt Cass. So after depositing Baymax in his port, he had ducked out of the warehouse to call her.

But now said call was over, and the image of Peni's body twitching uncontrollably was coming back into his head. He had to clench his fist to stop it from shaking.

The sound of the door being opened took him out of his thoughts, and as Hiro picked himself off of the ground, he turned the corner to see some of Peni's team walk out, heads hanging down. He tried to walk in, but people kept coming out, the amount almost comical. After he was sure the last person left, he ducked inside.

The silence was almost deafening as soon as he shut the door behind him. Professor Granville was looking at her phone, as if she was expecting someone to call. The rest were huddled around a hospital bed in the center of the room, right in front of the console.

And in that bed...was Peni.

She was still in her body suit, but had a white sheet covering everything except her head. Her eyes were closed, her hair back to its messy unkempt nature. Several wires were coming out from underneath her neck, snaking off of the bed into the cockpit of S.P.I.D.E.R., itself kneeling down next to her.

If Hiro didn't know any better, it looked like she was sleeping. But the stern looks on everyone's faces said otherwise.

"How is she?" he mumbled.

Dr. Morbius looked up from adjusting her IV. "I've managed to stabilize her for the time being. She's actually breathing on her own, which considering the circumstances is a good sign."

"So why is she not awake?"

The doctor stepped back and pressed a button on the console, bringing up Peni's vitals. "Because it is quite dangerous for us to do so. She is still connected to S.P.I.D.E.R., and as part of its fail-safe, it shut down to preserve its data and systems. Unfortunately, that also included Peni."

"So wake it up."

His head slightly recoiled at his abrasiveness. "I can't. Rebooting S.P.I.D.E.R. will cause the circuitry in her neck to do so as well, and I don't know what that would do to her body and brain." He closed the window and walked back over. "I've made her as comfortable as I can. I'm sorry, young man...but I've done all I can do."

Hiro's eyes darted between the rest of his friends. Honey Lemon, Fred, and Wasabi were all looking in different directions; no doubt they had already been told that. Go Go, sitting in a backwards chair, continued to stare at Peni, saying nothing.

"You...you're acting like she's dead."

"Far from it. But I've reached the point where any further intervention may result in lasting and permanent damage. And I will not do that. Especially if I am not familiar with her ailment."

Go Go's knuckles were going white, she was gripping the chair so hard.

"Grace tells me that you are Peni's cousin."

Hiro looked up at Dr. Morbius. "Yeah. I am."

He couldn't help but take note of his features; his skin was pale, even more so under the minimal lighting of the warehouse. His eyes were bloodshot and strained, no doubt from working all through the night. He wiped his face on his lab coat sleeve as he stared back at the teen genius. "Peni spoke of you several times, more often once you started attending this institute. She comes from a great family, and you are no different. I just wish that..."

He broke off and turned his head, overcome with emotion. Hiro was barely hanging on himself, but something the doctor said set his brain in motion.

"Sir, Peni mentioned to me that you were a part of the team from the start of this project. And you left before her dad joined up."

"She was partially correct. I was indeed part of that project. However, I did not leave before her father was chosen. I left...after the accident that claimed her parent's lives."

Now all of their heads were looking at him as he gripped the side of the bed. "I was not there that day because my son was sick, and I needed to take care of him. I received notification of the accident afterward. It was my research that caused the malfunction. I was responsible for everything."

"Michael."

"No, Grace!" he shouted at her. "You can say all you want about me being innocent, but there is not a day that goes by that I don't think about them. And I swore to myself that I would make things right. And that's why I came on when Peni did."

"And that's why your son hates you." Go Go spoke up for the first time. "You've spent so much energy and resources trying to right your wrong that your son resents you for it."

He sadly nodded. "I see that now. My son is a great person, but he had always had emotional outbursts. If I had just know how severe they were, maybe I could have stopped this from-"

Professor Granville stepped next to him, a hand on his shoulder. "The only person that is to blame for Ms. Parker's condition is your son. The police will find him and stop him."

The doctor looked up and straight at Hiro. "You must think me a monster. Someone who was blinded by his own ambition so much he put the lives of people at risk. I deserve that moniker, I guess."

"That's enough," the dean cut in. "Go. Get some rest. Join the rest of your team. I will monitor her and let you know if anything changes."

He nodded, slowly walking off. But before he could...

"I don't."

He turned back to face Hiro, who was still looking down at Peni. He couldn't look at him any more, but he had to say something.

"I don't think you're a monster, sir. I think...you've made mistakes. But that makes you human."

His eyes glanced toward Fred, and the person that had been in his mind for so long came in again. "People see what they want to see, sir. You wanted to see Michael happy, so that's what you saw. It didn't help that he was building something behind your back. But we can't see and hear everything. If he didn't want you to know, there'd be no way for you to know it."

"That's a very wise thing for you to say, young man."

"Don't get me wrong, sir." Hiro's hand gripped the railing of the bed. "There's a _lot_ more that I want to say to you right now. But none of that matters. The only thing that matters is Peni."

The doctor nodded. "Of course."

"Michael." Granville narrowed her eyes at him. "Go."

As he walked out the door, Hiro's head turned around to look at Peni. Still motionless, still non-responsive. It pained him to be there and not be able to do anything. He felt the presence of Honey Lemon over his shoulder, but he didn't dare look up.

"I believe I owe all of you an explanation."

"Yeah." Go Go said simply. "You do."

Granville adjusted the monitor next to the bed, thinking hard. After a moment, she pulled out the tablet behind her back and opened it up.

"The S.P.I.D.E.R project was a secret government undertaking designed to bridge the gap between law enforcement and technology. It was meant to supplement the population of officers without outright rendering them obsolete. The project went through many iterations and adjustments until it was theorized that in order to fully maximize the potential, there would be a need for a physical pilot to operate it." Several pictures scrolled through, each one newer than the last. "There was a worldwide search for a tester, but it turns out that the person that passed was right underneath their noses."

"Peni's dad."

She nodded at Hiro. "It wasn't just that they required someone with the mental and physical wherewithal, but also the genetic make-up to be compatible with the technology. Ms. Parker's father met all of the benchmarks, and so testing began. And progress was made. That is, until there was the accident alluded to by Dr. Morbius."

Granville glanced down at Peni. "The entire team, who was working on the project in an undisclosed location, came across an error in the programming after a particuarly strenuous test run. Before it could be corrected, it caused the robot's engine to spontaneously combust. The resulting explosion claimed the lives of every single person there, including Ms. Parker's mother. The only person that is still present from that earlier team is Dr. Morbius, who was not at the facility at the time."

She saw Go Go's glare and returned one back. "There was no foul play suspected, and the resulting investigation did not turn up any. It _was_ an accident. The project was immediately shelved, and a young Ms. Parker was sent to live with her next of kin."

"So that's why she's with Hiro's aunt and uncle," Honey Lemon said quietly. "But that doesn't explain why Peni's in this now."

"Because recently the government wanted to relaunch the project. They said that the technology was safer, and that there would be not as much risk as there was before. However, instead of a search for a pilot like before, they only had one candidate in mind."

Wasabi nodded. "Peni."

"And because Ms. Parker was smarter than everyone in the room, she was able to negotiate her own terms. If the project was deemed a success, all rights and patents would be signed over to her for her personal use. I assume that it was agreed to in part because government officials still felt responsible for her parents' death."

Granville stood up straight. "And Ms. Parker has spent the past few years working on this project. She had the fullest belief that she could make it work. So much so that when she became interested in furthering her education, she wanted to use the project as a basis for her entry."

"Professor, excuse me for interrupting." Honey Lemon took a tissue to her eyes. "But does...her family know about all of this? About her parents?"

She sighed. "From what I understand, both May Parker and Benjamin Parker are aware, but were sworn to secrecy due to the nature of the project. No other family was to know about it. Emphasis on _was,_ because Mr. Hamada was told about it by Ms. Parker."

"Did _you_ know?"

Hiro's words cut into the conversation, the anger not lost on his teacher. She bent down to look at him in the eyes.

"I know that you may think me some sort of all-knowing prophet, Mr. Hamada, but I did not know about any of this beforehand. And I fought very hard for the information when they _did_ arrive. I had to pull a lot of strings for both Ms. Parker and Ms. Brock to come. And there was a fair amount of push back from all avenues."

"Was there push back when you let Addy stay at your house? So that she could get some sort of advantage or something?"

Now everyone's attention was on the dean. "Aren't you not suppose to do that?" Fred asked.

Granville bit her lip. It was clear she didn't want that particular detail to come out. "Mr. Hamada, a long time ago, the dean of this university took a chance on a young woman who didn't know what she wanted to do with her life. He hired her onto the staff as a teaching assistant, and that single opportunity allowed her to flourish and come into her own."

"Unlike Ms. Parker, Ms. Brock _has _no family. She was not afforded the opportunities that Ms. Parker has had. She fought very hard to make a project that was on par with the program that the government was making. I thought that if I could give her a chance...she would make the most of it. And I am aware, Mr. Frederickson, of the repercussions that I may face for my impropriety and I accept them without hesitation."

"Her project merged with Michael," Hiro muttered. "Peni told me that it runs different than hers. The Sym Engine is more closely attuned with her brain. The electricity must've overloaded it. That's why it's getting stronger. It's feeding off all of those emotions that Addy had. All that jealousy."

"Well, that project," Go Go interrupted, "almost killed us. And it's going to hurt a lot more people if we don't do something."

"Maybe if we can find out what's wrong with Peni, we can use the same thing on Michael." Hiro started looking over the screens. "Do we know why she won't wake up?"

"That is a complicated matter, Mr. Hamada. I am not an expert when it comes to what technology can do to the human body, and the team here was not able to make any headway into that." Granville pressed a button on her phone, and the main television in the facility started to power up. "However, I do know someone who is."

The screen turned on fully, and a person's face came forward for everyone to see.

A familiar one.

"Ms. Khan, have you had a chance to study the information I sent to you?"

Karmi looked like she had just woke up, circles under her eyes and hair pulled back in a messy ponytail. She was in her bedroom and busy writing something down on a nearby notepad. She hadn't looked up yet, but Hiro loudly cleared his throat, jolting her to look at the screen.

"_Ummm...I thought you were the only person here, Professor."_

"I am not, as you can clearly see. But that is unimportant. The information, if you please."

Karmi's eyes gazed downward, seeing the person in the bed for the first time. They widened almost comically to the size of saucers. Hiro heard her mutter something under her breath, but he couldn't make it out.

"Ms. Khan," Granville said, a little more firmly. "I need you to focus. There is a young girl whose life may hang in the balance, and possibly many others. Tell us what you know."

She tore her eyes away from Peni and looked down at her notes. _"The tech in her body is far beyond my understanding, but the basics are still there. It's interfering with her brain's ability to send signals to the rest of her body. That, coupled with the excess electrical charge in it, means that her body did the only thing it could to preserve itself...shut down."_

Karmi pointed to the back of her neck. _"I'm assuming that her tech helped facilitate the process. So she's alive. And her brain is functional. But there's another problem. That excess charge is trapped in her cortex, causing her brain activity to slowly increase."_

"Isn't that a good thing?" Wasabi asked.

_"Not really, because without letting that charge disperse or ground, it'll overwork her brain until it can't take any more stress."_ She looked over at the dean again. _"Professor, it would help if I knew what she was actually attached to. I might be able to further diagnose her."_

Granville pushed her fingers onto the tablet, a corresponding noise ringing out. Karmi leaned her head forward and gasped. S.P.I.D.E.R. must have been out of frame for her until that very moment.

"_Professor...that was on the news. I saw it this morning. It was fighting downtown._" She turned her head to look at Peni. _"Is she-"  
_

"Ms. Khan. Your diagnosis?"

"_...Professor, something with that magnitude of electrical output...it's not safe for her to be still attached to it."  
_

"Then we'll unplug her, then."

"_No, Genius Boy! Don't do that!"  
_

Hiro's hand was halfway to her neck before stopping. "Karmi, I thought you-"

"_Look,"_ Karmi started, her fingers on her temple. _"It's like a backdraft."_

"A what?"

Baymax, now fully charged, cut in. A picture of a door came into view, a gif of a flame bursting through it repeatedly. _"A backdraft occurs when oxygen is introduced into an environment that is oxygen-depraved. It causes the intensity and combustible ability of the flames to increase exponentially."  
_

"_Right," _Karmi said. _"If we unplug her, or even open the port to try to remove it, it's going to release even more electrical energy into her brain. If you do that...it could cause a sudden and catastrophic brain aneurysm."_

Hiro withdrew his hand.

"_There'd be no slow decline of health. There'd be no time to do anything."  
_

And it started shaking.

"_She'd be dead. Instantly."  
_

His body hit the chair next to Go Go, not knowing what to do. But his brain still had one question.

"How long does she have?"

"_Hiro, I'm...I'm not a doctor. I'm not comfortable giving a diagnosis of any sort."  
_

"Karmi."

He stared up at the television, looking into her eyes. "Please. How long?"

Karmi's hand was over her mouth, fighting back her emotions. She let it fall into her lap, seemingly resigned to his request.

"_Based on the data I have, and the rate at which her brain activity is increasing..."_

She deliberately avoided looking at the screen.

"_She'd be lucky to survive the night. And she **won't** live to the next one."_

There was no sound in the room except for the constant beeping of the EKG machine. Karmi's eyes wouldn't stop crying, and Hiro was pretty sure that his weren't going to either. Honey Lemon's hand was latched onto his shoulder.

"_And on top of all that, it looks like there's some sort of virus in the code. It might not even let you in to the tech, even if you did want to disconnect her. I tried to debug it, but I don't have a lot here to work on that."  
_

"That is fine, Ms. Khan," Granville whispered. "Thank you for your help."

"So what're we going to do?"

Their heads turned to Hiro, who had stood up from his chair. Honey Lemon brushed her hair back out of her eyes. "Hiro, there isn't anything we can do for her."

"Yeah, there's only one thing we can do right now." Go Go also stood up, pushing her fist into her palm. "We have to find Michael and Addy. If we find them and stop them, maybe he can do something to fix her. But we have to leave now."

"I'm not going."

The other four had gotten up and started toward the door, but Hiro's interjection stopped them in their tracks.

"You can take Baymax with you. Do whatever you need to do." Hiro stared down at Peni, his face stern. "But I'm staying here." His eyes went to S.P.I.D.E.R., it seemingly glaring back at him. "I'm going to find a way to help Peni."

They glanced at each other. Yeah, any way they sliced it, this wasn't going to end well. The silent vote, unfortunately, didn't not go the Korean's way, because she was the unlucky one to step forward.

"Hiro, you're not going to get anything done by sitting there moping. We have a job to do."

"I'm not moping." Hiro's finger traced on top of the railing. "I'm working. And I would appreciate it if you didn't interrupt me."

Go Go let out a soft growl. "Listen, you're letting your emotions cloud your judgment. You know that the best thing for you to do is come with us. Hey, it's not like she's going anywhere."

Fred, Honey Lemon, and Wasabi grimaced. Yup, not the play there.

"Don't you dare..." Hiro wheeled around to face her. "Don't you dare joke about this."

She stabbed a finger in his direction, the small trace of understanding in her voice gone. "You need to get your head into the game! And staying here moping about the person who you didn't even know three days ago is not going to do anyone any favors."

The entirety of Hiro's vision was starting to fill with nothing but red. Go Go was always the most succinct one out of the group; that came with its ups and downs. Looking at the situation logically was her strong suit. Being understanding and supportive...was not.

But what she had said almost made Hiro fly off the handle. This wasn't just anyone that they were talking about; it wasn't some random citizen or person.

"This is Peni we're talking about here. She's my cousin. She's my family. I'm _not_ just going to leave her behind. I'm not cold-hearted like _you_._"_

Go Go inhaled deeply through her nose. Yeah, that one definitely stung, he could tell. But her gaze was still on him. "Hiro, I'm being realistic. You've heard everything we've said. You can't help her. The fact that she's your family doesn't mean anything right now. You don't know her. You-"

"_Did it matter before!?"_

Hiro was full-on yelling now, right into the face of Go Go. He was in danger of losing control, and the only thing that kept him in place was the very confused look of his classmate staring back at him.

"Before what?"

"Did it matter when you helped Robbie?" he whispered.

She narrowed her eyes at him, saying nothing. The mention of her "boyfriend" (Hiro made it a point to add the quotes when conversation cropped up with him in it) wasn't going to make her feel any better, but that was besides the point.

"Did it matter when we helped Aspen?" Hiro continued, waving his hand in Wasabi's direction. "When we put our heads together to do what was right for someone we didn't know?"

Honey Lemon raised her hand as if to interrupt, but thought better of it.

"All of the people we've helped all throughout the city...does it matter that we know them? No. It's not a prerequisite for us to get to know someone before helping them. We do it because it's right."

"Present company, Mr. Hamada."

The warning came just in time, because Hiro was just about to go on about patrol and supervillains and whatnot, forgetting that Karmi was still on the call. Nevertheless, he got even closer to Go Go. "It's personal for me, Go Go, because it _is_. Peni was someone that I could relate to. You don't know...you don't know what it's like to be a person out of their own environment. A kid in an adult's world. Peni knows that. And I was just beginning to figure that out. And I'm not going to just ignore her."

His chest started hurting from his heart working overtime. "I am going to help Peni. She is my family. I am going to do whatever it takes to fix her. And if you don't want to do that...then you can get the hell out of my way."

With that, Hiro turned on the spot and went back to Peni, resuming his search for a solution. The facility was dead quiet again, but not because of the solemness of before. It was getting out of the way of Go Go, who looked like she was going to explode.

"_Hiro, you are not in a calm state of mind. Perhaps it would be best for you to partake in an activity that-"_

"Shut up, Baymax. That's an order."

He didn't look up, but the sound of his robot blinking didn't deter him. There _had_ to be something. Something that he was missing.

"_Hiro."  
_

It wasn't Baymax that interrupted him again. It was the person that he was dreading to hear from.

"_We want to help you. We do. But you have to **let us** help you. You can't do it alone."_

He heard her pause, and then shakily add in another sentence.

"_Someone has to help. And that means you too."_

Hiro looked up at Karmi, who was staring at him with tearful eyes. Something about her look stopped him in his tracks. Then again, when was anything she did not make him pause?

"_You can't do it on your own. Don't push us away. Please."_

The lights above flickered, and the television Karmi was on almost cut out entirely. Karmi craned her head forward and slapped her computer. _"Are you guys still there? The call quality shot down for a second."  
_

"Yes, we've been dealing with sudden outages and draining of power, Ms. Khan. That is part of the problem that we've been dealing with ever since..."

Granville stopped as she noticed Hiro's eyes light up. "Mr. Hamada, care to enlighten us?"

"Hold on."

He strolled over to S.P.I.D.E.R., tapping parts of its body and mumbling to himself. Karmi looked over to the dean, confused. _"Professor, what is he doing?"_

"I imagine that he's doing what you adolescents like to say sometimes...his 'thing'."

He had his fingers in front of his face, framing the robot with his fingers. He then turned around and did the same thing to Baymax, still muttering about something.

"Look, I have no idea what he's doing." Fred was looking between everything in front of him, his eyes starting to glaze over. "I could barely keep up with the giant robots, and I'm an _expert_ on those."

"I don't doubt that at all, Mr. Frederickson."

"I have an idea."

The gang turned to Hiro, who was still standing next to S.P.I.D.E.R. "Professor Granville said it. We're going to drain her brain of the electricity."

"And how exactly are we going to do that?" Wasabi inquired.

"Baymax."

Hiro pointed over to his robot. "We can hook him up to S.P.I.D.E.R., making it the intermediary between the energy. Pull it from her, through it, and into Baymax."

"_Hiro, that's not how electricity works," _Karmi said from the screen. _"There's so much ambient electrical energy around you guys. It will just go straight into her."  
_

"Then we'll turn it off. Shut down the entire campus if we'll have to. Electricity flows from places where it is to places where it's not. If we remove all of it from the surrounding area..."

"_It'll have no choice but to flow out of the offending area,"_ she finished. _"You could use a filter to selectively control the amount of electricity being removed. But...how are you going to do that without tampering with the system?"_

Hiro looked around. He hadn't thought that far ahead, but his eyes fell on a particular piece of tech he hadn't dealt with before.

Something that Peni had made.

"We'll use this."

Hiro gingerly picked up Peni's hand and ran her fingers over her hair clip. On cue, the spider robot attached to it came alive in Hiro's hand, looking wildly around before looking up at him.

"OK, no one said that the spider jewelry thing was _an actual spider!_"

"Shush, Knucklehead."

He lowered his head to the tiny robot's level. "You have an AI, right? You can understand me? If you can, tap my hand once."

The spider raised its left front-most leg...and set it down gently.

"OK. I need your help. Peni's in trouble. And I need your help to fix her. Can you do that?"

It turned and peered over his hand to see Peni's face. After a second, it looked back at Hiro, its leg tapping his palm again.

"And I need everyone's help." Hiro looked at the rest of the group. "That is...if you want to."

"Shut up, moron." Go Go punched him in the arm, but she was grinning now. "What do you need us to do?"

* * *

"_Well, we need to drain all of the power out of these facilities. I don't know how to do that without taking down the entire campus."  
_

"_I can help with that, Mr. Hamada," Granville cut in. "Each one of these buildings has two generators, one on the ground and one on the roof. Each one has a shutdown mechanism in their circuit breakers, but they must be manually and simultaneously activated. That is where the four of you will come in. Each of you can go to a generator and activate its manual override."_

"_After the power's been drained, I can use Baymax's Sleep Mode chip to debug the virus in Peni. Once that's done, I'll drain the charge out of her with her spider."_

"_And that'll work?" Wasabi said.  
_

"_...Maybe."_

"_What?"_

"_Go Go, it's the only chance we have. I can't sit here and do nothing. And we're running out of time."_

Hiro slotted the dark green chip into Baymax's hub; he had made it a point to carry his various chips around just in case of an emergency. And a good thing too, because this definitely qualified.

"OK." He connected the wire from Baymax to S.P.I.D.E.R.'s main console. "Once I activate the chip, the program will travel to Peni, and you need to either eradicate the virus or draw it out with the electricity. I can help you for some of it (he pointed to his remote-control setup), but you may be on your own."

_"I am prepared."_

Hiro walked over to Granville, who was still monitoring Peni's vitals. "How is she since we've started?"

"She is still fine, Mr. Hamada, but just as Ms. Khan stated, her brain activity appears to be speeding up." Granville looked up at Karmi on the screen, who nodded. "Whatever we plan on doing, we need to attempt it rather quickly."

"OK."

As Hiro stood behind Peni, who was now in a partial sitting position on the bed, the dean pressed the headset on her ear. "Is everyone in position?"

* * *

"_Ms. Tanaka?"_

Go Go stopped right in front of the box behind the building, creaking the creaky door open. "Yeah, I'm ready."

* * *

"_Ms. Rodriguez?"_

Honey Lemon nodded from above them, the phone to her ear. "Yes, Professor."

* * *

"_Mr. Calloway?"_

From the next building, Wasabi pulled out a tissue from his pocket and wiped down the handle. "A little disgusted, but I'm here."

* * *

"_Mr. Frederickson?"_

No response.

"_Mr. Frederickson?"_

Fred was panting heavily as he opened the roof access door on the other building. "I don't know why you gave me the farthest one away! I'm out of shape."

* * *

"I'll take that as a yes. Everyone, stand by."

As Hiro put the finishing touches on his coding, he had forgotten about the last member of the group.

"_Hiro."_

"Had" being the operative word.

"_I need to tell you something. Something important."  
_

"Does it have something to Peni? Cuz if not, it can wait." Hiro didn't look up as the robot spider held on to his shoulder, trying not to get thrown off. Best not to dwell on what he could say; he had to focus on what he was doing.

"_I had Doreen go to the cafe tonight."_

Or not.

"_I...sent her there. To try to get information on Peni."  
_

Hiro turned his entire body slowly to face the screen. Karmi wasn't looking at him, choosing instead to stare directly into the desk, cheeks blazing. _"I...suspected something was going on after Peni talked to me on your computer the other day. I don't know if she told you that."_

"No." He glanced down at his cousin in the bed. "No, she didn't."

"_I..."_ Now Karmi's hand was on her cheek, still avoiding him. _"I...didn't know that she was your cousin."_

He just stared at her, silent.

"_I thought...that she was...your..."  
_

The end of the sentence never came, and Hiro's eyes narrowed into slits as he took a step toward the screen. Now he was curious. "My _what?_"

"Mr. Hamada. Ms. Khan."

Granville's voice rang through the room, and both of the teen geniuses turned toward her. Smiling slightly, she pointed over to the bed. "Perhaps it would be wise to focus on the task at hand and not your personal grievances toward each other. There will be time for that later, I presume."

"_Yeah." _Karmi nodded. _"Yeah, you're right."_

Now thoroughly confused, Hiro went back to the head of the bed. Granville looked up at the screen. "Karmi, I'm afraid that this is where we must depart. I do not want to keep this call open while we attempt this in the case that something goes wrong. You have, as always, been invaluable with your help. I hope to speak to you soon."

_"You too, Professor."  
_

Granville reached for her phone to end the call…

"_Wait. Hiro."  
_

He didn't look up again, the spider now in his palm. "Yeah?"

"_No matter what happens...call me. I want to know what happened. And...I need to talk to you. Please?"_

The shaking in her voice was jarring, but he bent his head to look at Karmi, giving her the warmest smile he could muster. "I will."

Karmi returned it, and a moment later she ended the call, the giant screen going black. Granville stepped forward as she wiped a tear away from her eye.

"What?" Hiro asked.

The dean crossed her arms behind her back. "One day, Mr. Hamada...you two will be the end of me."

Ignoring Hiro's blush, she reopened the call to the others. "Everyone, listen carefully. There is a small orange button next to the central lever. That button needs to be pushed in conjunction with you lowering said lever. And all four of you need to perform your action simultaneously in order for the power to be cut. Is that understood?"

"_Yeah, but no offense...why do you have such a convoluted way of doing this? Seems counter-intuitive."  
_

"Ms. Tanaka, the original intent of these buildings was to house things that required constant electricity and power. Having a simple power switch to turn everything off would be, quite simply, stupid."

_"Fair."  
_

"Very well. On the count of three. One..."

_Four hands went to the levers, ready to pull it down._

"Two..."

_Their index fingers landed on their respective buttons._

"Three."

For a couple of agonizing seconds, nothing happened. And then, quite suddenly, everything was plunged into darkness. Luckily for Hiro, he had the forethought of turning the light on his phone on. It wasn't much, but it would have to do.

"Baymax, you're up." He lowered the goggles over his head and pressed the button on top. "It should be a quick trip. Let me know when you're there."

"_I have already arrived."_

* * *

The digital version of Baymax landed on a giant clear runway, data lines running every which way. It was not like when he was debugging his own body all those days ago, but the buildings and streets were red instead of dark purple. Also, he wasn't delirious because of a dying battery.

"_But it appears that we have a problem."_

A small round data ball hovered next to the digital Baymax, Hiro's head appearing on its screen. _"Yeah, what's the problem?"_

He pointed up at the nearest wall, and Hiro gasped. There was a giant black blob, data pouring into it. They appeared to have just gotten its attention, because it stared back at them with devilish green eyes.

"_Oh. That's a problem."  
_

Back in the real world, Hiro poked at Baymax's belly, who was standing next to him. "I might be able to data mine the source of the virus. Give me one sec."

"_Intruder! You are not welcome! We will become one!"_

* * *

"...Oh crap."

"Mr. Hamada?"

Her phone light shined in his direction, and Hiro briefly took off the goggles to look at her. "When Peni got her power drained by Addy's robot, some of its framework must have leaked into her tech. Part of V.E.N.O.M.'s in her."

"Can you get it out?"

He put the goggles back on. "I think so. It seems pretty attached to Baymax. If he can draw it back into his system, I can isolate it into a containment field."

"_I am able to do that...because it is already chasing me."  
_

* * *

Digital Baymax, now in his superhero armor, was flying as fast as its digital wings would carry it, the growing mass of black data rolling behind it. _"Do you have any additional ideas?"_

_"Nope!" _

Hiro yelled. _"Get back to your body and we'll figure it out later!"_

He flipped over to its back and looked behind it. The areas that they had traveled through appeared to be lowering their data intensity once passed through. It was an interesting observation.

"_Hiro, it is possible that this corruption may be the soul cause of Peni's medical problems. It is imperative that we do not allow it reentry into her body."  
_

"_You are weak, but you are persistent! We must return to where we came!" _The mass slowed down and started to turn around.

"_...Hiro, it is doing exactly the thing that I advised it not to."_

* * *

"Oh no, it's going back."

"Mr. Hamada, her brain activity is slowing down, almost dangerously so. It would appear that this malignant code was not only interfering with her, but also keeping her alive. I hope that you have a back-up plan, because we cannot-"

"I know!"

Hiro wildly threw his light around, desperate to find anything that would help.

And then he felt something on his wrist.

The light went down to see Peni's robot spider, trying to get his attention.

"Wait." Hiro was brainstorming again. "Baymax, can we unplug her?"

"_The mechanism is capable of being used, but it is inadvisable."_

"Yeah, good to know."

One of the corner overhead lights suddenly came on, and Hiro and Granville turned to see it. "Um...Professor?"

"The shutdown must be a timed one. I unfortunately was not here when these buildings were built, so I was only made aware of the override process. That does present a problem."

"_Professor!"_ Go Go's voice ran through her ear. _"Power's coming back on! You guys might have about thirty seconds left before full power is restored!"_

"Heard, Ms. Tanaka." Granville returned her attention to Hiro. "Do you have a plan, Mr. Hamada?"

"One. And I don't know if it will work." Hiro pointed to S.P.I.D.E.R.'s cockpit, where the wires were leading into Peni's neck. "I'm going to substitute her robot's tech with something else."

He held up his palm, where her spider was walking around.

"Some older tech."

Granville's eyes widened. "You're using that not just as a filter, but a substitute."

"Sort of, yeah." Hiro saw it flatten, returning to its dormant state. "Even though it's older, she's managed to update it enough that I think if we place it on the port in her neck, it'll properly disperse that electrical energy through her natural nervous systems. But I have to do it at the same time as her and Baymax getting unplugged. Can you get into the cockpit?"

Granville was already halfway up, stumbling her way behind the chair in S.P.I.D.E.R. "I am not as young as I used to be, Mr. Hamada, but I am in position."

"Baymax? Are you back?"

"_I am; however, I was unable to secure the malignant data. However, if we separate our connections, we can trap it in said transit."  
_

"Mr. Hamada, we have ten seconds."

Hiro gently lifted Peni's head, the spider ready to be stamped onto her port. "OK, on three. One...two...three!"

The wires leading from her neck disconnected, falling down to the floor below. He saw out of the corner of her eye the other wires drop from Baymax and S.P.I.D.E.R. This was it. Now or never. He pressed the tiny robot into her neck…

Just as the entirety of the power came back on.

And so did Peni.

The girl threw her body up in a panic, a giant gasp escaping from her mouth. Her hair hung over her face as she breathed in deeply, trying to get her energy back.

"Holy cow." Hiro sat down in the chair, completely exhausted. "That actually worked."

The far door slammed open, and his friends burst through, Honey Lemon the first to spot Peni up in her bed. "Peni! You're awake!"

"Yes," she said as everyone drew near. Her hand was shaking as it came to rest on the railing of her bed. "It would appear that I am."

"Do you remember anything, Ms. Parker?" Granville asked. "You've been out for quite a while."

Peni turned her head to look up at the dean still in S.P.I.D.E.R. "I...remember arguing with Michael. I remember getting attacked by V.E.N.O.M. I remember fighting alongside Big Hero 6, which I can consider one of my crowning achievements if I do nothing else in my lifetime."

Hiro heard Fred chuckle from behind him. "Do you remember issue #25 of _The Glove_ that we talked about at the Cafe? Where he fought his evil nemesis The Compartment?"

"You are mistaken. That was issue #24. Issue #25 was him dealing with the ramifications of finding a hole in his costume."

There was silence for a moment, immediately followed by the sound of Go Go's hand slapping her forehead. "Oh my God. I can't even right now."

"Yup, clean bill of health!" Fred stretched his arms above his head. "Dr. Fred deems it so."

"Ms. Parker will need to go to an _actual_ doctor, Mr. Frederickson." Granville was now back amongst the group. "If you can show me your medical degree, I can take your word for it."

All of a sudden, all of the lights in the building started to flicker on and off again, as well as the loudest roar Hiro had ever heard in his life. He cupped his hands over his ears to try to drown it out.

"What in the world is that?" Wasabi yelled.

All six of their phones went off together. It was a news alert, flanked by red triangles and warning flashes. Before Hiro could decipher it, Granville spoke up. "Ms. Rodriguez, can you get the news on screen?"

Honey Lemon was already on it, pressing buttons rapidly on the console. After a moment, the main television flashed with Bluff Dunder, whose head was barely poking out from behind his desk. _"My comic book fantasy has come to life! And instead of me getting cool powers like laser vision and the ability to do my taxes in less than thirty minutes, we have this! Oh, the humanity!"_

The picture widened out to show the rooftops of the business district. It seemed normal...until a giant elongated claw came from behind it, slamming down onto the roof.

And then another.

In all, eight tentacles came into their vision, as well as the entire creature. It was gigantic, with a lizard-like head and giant teeth poking out. Its shimmering blue body was thin in the middle and a large insect-like abdomen at the end, spikes adorning it as well. The surrounding area shined with electrical energy. One of its legs stepped to a new roof, and it began to drain all of the electricity out of the billboard hanging in front.

"Oh my God," Honey Lemon whispered.

The camera, no doubt from a civilian, zoomed in on the chest area of the creature. It was very blurry, but the group could see a tiny being inside. Even through the pixels, the black and white robot was recognizable.

"Addy." Peni's voice was no longer firm, but shaking terribly.

"_**Ladies and Gentlemen! We have a great show for you toni—zzht!"**_

"It's...feeding off of the energy. It's amassed a terrible amount, and it seeks more."

Hiro looked at his cousin, her eyes widened in horror.

"It's going to drain the entire city."

Everyone there continued to stare at the screen, the other buildings beginning to lose power as well.

"And nothing's going to stop it."

"_**Better break out the cold drinks and air conditioning, folks..."**_

The creature stared down as the public began to scream and flee, searching for its next source of power.

"_**Because tonight is going to be a scorcher!"**_

* * *

**AUTHOR'S NOTE: **For those of you who have read _Edge of Spider-Geddon #2 _(which this story is based off of), you'll know where this is going, and you'll recognize the creature that is now in downtown San Fransokyo. For those who haven't, imagine the ugliest spider/ant/lizard/kaiju...thing in the world, and imagine it's made of electricity and tech. And there's two people and a robot inside "controlling" it.

That's what that is.

But now that Peni's awake, maybe now the team can put their heads together and come up with something to stop it.

Unless Hiro has something to say about that. Something about seeing your cousin unconscious and almost at death's door didn't sit well with him, and that's going to come to a head next chapter during the battle.

Tension? Yes.

Arguments? Definitely.

An unmasking?

...You'll just need to read to find out.

**Down Came The Rain** will be out next week. In the meantime, read and review, if you like. Until next time, everyone.


	7. Down Came The Rain

_**Disclaimer: **I own nothing. You should know that by now._

* * *

_**Chapter 6 – Down Came The Rain**_

Several skyscrapers started to dim in brightness as the creature continued its rooftop walk around the business district. The screams coming over the television were evident in the silence of the school facility. Hiro and his friends could only watch as Bluff Dunder moved forward with his news.

"_As you can see, there's a giant monster attacking San Fransokyo. We haven't had one of those since...the last time a giant monster attacked San Fransokyo. Speaking of which..." _He looked directly at the camera. _"Our giveaway of free movie tickets to __**Kentucky Kaiju VII: Attack of the Killer Potatoes **__will be going on at nine o'clock tonight. This is of course provided that there will be any people left to participate."_

The lights in the facility started to flicker, and Hiro could see Dunder duck behind the counter again. _"Stay tuned for news at 11. I will be here hiding stoically under my desk until then."_

Granville wheeled around to him, stone-faced. "Mr. Hamada."

"Yeah, on our way." Hiro turned with the rest of the group to head out of the warehouse.

"Hiro."

Peni was still panting from her recent return to the land of the living, her eyes focused on him. "Where are you going?" she asked weakly.

Granville cut in before he could respond. "They're going to the designated lockdown area, as has your team. It is not safe for anyone to be leaving this campus, especially now."

"Then I need to go as well." Peni raised her foot as if to lower herself from the bed, but the dean wasn't having any of it.

"Ms. Parker, you are in no condition to be going anywhere right now. You will remain here; I must monitor your vitals still."

"Professor," Hiro said, his hand on the door. "Keep her safe. Please."

Granville simply nodded. "I will, Mr. Hamada."

Hiro ran out of the door, leaving the two still inside. Peni leaned back into the bed, still staring at the exit. "He looked like he saw a ghost."

"Do not worry about him, Ms. Parker," Granville replied. She too quickly glanced at the door, her brow furrowed. "I'm sure he had more pressing concerns right now..."

* * *

The plume of smoke from Baymax's thrusters flew over the buildings as they neared the monstrous creature. Their normal armors were still on the fritz from Michael's suit earlier in the day, so they were now in their Ultra Armors, the lights from the billboards shining on them.

Or at least the billboards that were still working.

"Whoa," Go Go muttered as Baymax pulled up far above the city, the monster still standing on the buildings below them. "This is bad. Like, _really_ bad."

"Yeah." Hiro tapped the side of his helmet. "So, you guys want to hear the bad news or good news first?"

"Neither."

Hiro ignored Wasabi's comment as he continued his scan. "The hardlight aura that's surrounding that creature appears to be stabilizing the electricity in it. So it doesn't look like it's going to sap the power out of our armors."

"And the bad news?" Honey Lemon asked.

"...I have no idea how to stop it."

The group landed on a rooftop, a safe distance away from all of the chaos. They watched as the creature continued to suck the electricity out the buildings, its progress not stopping.

"Hiro, what are we going to do?"

He stared at the lizard-like head, not responding.

"Hiro!" Go Go shouted.

"What?"

"We need to come up with a plan!"

"_You don't think I know that?"_

Hiro was staring at his teammate now, his demeanor now shifting. "I just saved Peni from a coma that I wasn't sure she was going to get out of! You'll forgive me if I'm a little frazzled right now!"

"Go Go." Wasabi grabbed her arm. "Lay off. We need to focus. And I can't believe _I'm _the one who's saying that."

The teen genius surveyed his surroundings, muttering to himself. "We're probably going to have to call in the big guns."

"The what?"

Hiro turned to Fred. "You have it ready?"

"Yes, Fearless Leader!" Fred saluted and started rummaging through his suit. "I think I packed it in here before we left SFIT."

"What is he talking about?"

"_This!"  
_

The group turned to Fred, who just finished finding what he was looking for. He held it out of his mouth for everyone to see.

"...Your flute."

"Yup!" Fred popped open his hood and put the instrument to his lips. "Observe!"

The sound that came out of the flute when he played it was not the low, soothing tones that the group was expecting. Instead, it was a deep, bellowing sound that ran throughout the entirety of the area. After a few seconds of tapping his fingers on the flute, Honey Lemon pointed over towards the bay.

"Look!"

Something was beginning to come up from underneath the water. Something big. And green.

"You _have_ to be kidding me."

Fred finished playing, smiling at Go Go's incredulous face. "I do not kid about these things, Go Go."

The Kentucky Kaiju was now standing in the bay, staring down the electric creature. That had definitely gotten its attention, because it turned its body toward the new arrival. The Kaiju bent his head back, letting out a primal roar.

"Wait..." Go Go stared at Fred's smug expression. "_That's_ why you've had that flute? To get your stupid robot thing up and about?"

"That was my idea," Hiro said. "We needed some sort of way to call it, and I suggested a coded signal only meant for us."

"And that?"

He saw Go Go pointing to the flute. "That...was Fred's idea. I just built the tech."

There was now a hand print right on the front of Go Go's helmet, no doubt intended for her forehead.

"Come on." Hiro climbed back onto Baymax. "Let's go kick some gigantic lizard butt."

"I thought you said you didn't know how to beat it."

"I don't. Not yet." Hiro held out his arm for Go Go to grab. "But I'm angry, and I feel like punching something with a giant fist."

The Korean smiled, taking his hand. "That's my boy."

* * *

There was a hard pound on the apartment door, and it took all of three steps for the girl to reach it. She yanked it open and stared at the man. "Matt, what are you knocking for? I'm trying to hide from the giant monster that's in the city."

"I know, but we're evacuating everyone from the building. Apparently we're going to a better building. One that's more structurally sound than this one."

"But what about my stuff? I can't just leave it all here."

"I mean," The man thrust his thumb down the hall. "Unless you want to mess with the cops and have them come in and get you, I suggest we get going."

"What about your flat?"

"I'll just get a new flat. I'll manage."

Doreen swore loudly as Matt made off around the corner. "Sorry that I'm worried about my apartment, Mr. I Have A Flat Man." She grabbed her phone, wallet, and her headset off of the counter, shoving the latter into her ear. "Tippy-Toe! We gotta go!"

The squirrel, stuffing things into a small sack, squeaked and pointed behind her.

She turned behind her to see her pride and joy in the corner: her mascot costume from Yggdrasil. It was literally a giant squirrel on the outside (googly eyes notwithstanding), but on the inside was fitted with several pockets, a charge port, and even her own mini Wi-Fi router. Luckily, her bosses had given her some free will when it came to outfitting it. With claws on both the feet and the hands, it made for some very interactive displays when kids came to visit the wildlife refuge.

Mostly jumping down from the trees to scare them. But it was the most popular show there, so thankfully her bosses had let her use her two and a half years of community college to fine-tune the mechanics. The very _expensive_ mechanics.

"Of course! I can't leave this here; work would kill me if anything happen to it."

Doreen quickly suited up, popping the oversized head over her own. She was used to to being in it for long periods of time, but she just had to get it outside. She set her phone into the pocket on the left to keep it charged and then stuffed said arm into the sleeve. "Ready, Tippy-Toe?"

The actual squirrel tied the sack to its ribbon, nodding.

"Ma'am, you can't go in there! It's not safe!"

Doreen raised her head, intrigued. One of the lesser known perks added was a hot mic wired to her headset. That way, she could hear any kids trying to sneak up on her. But now, she was picking up the words from someone outside her open window.

"My daughter's still in there! On the fourth floor!"

"Ma'am, the fire department are on their way. They'll get your daughter!"

Doreen narrowed her eyes, recognizing the voice. "That's Ms. Crawford. And that means-"

A giant explosion rocked the building, and she was almost thrown off of her feet. "What the?"

"Ashley!"

She shook her head, trying to get the cobwebs out. This was dangerous. She had to get out. But she couldn't just leave that girl in here.

So her brain made up its mind.

"Tippy-Toe, get out of here. I'm grabbing her daughter!"

He was almost out the window, loudly squeaking at her.

"Yeah, well...your definition of stupid is different than mine." She waved her hand at him. "Go! I'll catch up!"

With one last noise, he jumped out the window to the tree. Doreen ducked her costume head out the door and looked up the stairs. She saw the light of flames poking out from the railing, as well as the occasional plume fly out. "Yeah, that's not good. But I have to get up there!" She pulled her head back and looked around, trying to think of something.

And her eyes fell on the open window.

"...OK. Maybe our definitions aren't as different as I thought."

Twenty seconds later, Doreen found herself clinging for life against the brick wall outside of the building. Thankfully, she was on the side of the building that didn't face the tenants and officers standing in the street. _Not_ thankfully, she was sweating profusely, the air conditioning in the costume overtaxing.

"Yeah. _One_ too many lava cakes at _Gramercy._Note to self, Doreen." she added as she grasped at the windowsill. "Go on a diet when this is over."

She pulled her head to the window and peeked in. Yeah, it looks like she was in the right place; she knew from her limited interaction with her neighbor that she was a model, and all of the professional pictures on the wall gave it away. "Looks like the fire hasn't gotten here yet. Should be safe for me to open the window."

Doreen did so, tumbling inside. "Ashley!" she shouted. "Are you in here?"

She heard crying coming from the hall closet and scampered over to it, throwing the door open. Sitting on the floor was her target: a young child with a red ponytail, clutching a small stuffed squirrel.

Branded with the logo of Yggdrasil. Sold at the gift shop there.

Irony at its finest.

The girl looked up to see her rescuer. "You're from the park! Are you here to save me?"

Doreen's breath caught in her throat. Outside of her bosses, no one knew that she was the one that was in the costume. Most of the other coworkers ignored her, dubbing her the "weird squirrel girl". It was nice that someone actually looked at her with appreciation.

And she could have enjoyed it…if it wasn't for the fire burning in the building.

"Umm...yes! I'm here to save you! Come with me, Ashley!" She held her arm out. "Let's get out of here!"

"Yay!" The girl clung to her waist, complicating the already rough moment.

"Hang on tight, sweetie! Don't let go!" Doreen pulled the girl closer to her. "I'm going to try the door, OK?"

In all of the sentimental thinking and heroic stoicism, she had completely forgotten that the floor below was on fire, now climbing up to the floor they were on.

Which was completely obvious as soon as she creaked open the door.

* * *

"Ma'am, you _cannot_ go in there!"

The cadet, along with two officers, were doing all they could to keep the woman at bay. Her red hair was messy and sticking to her face as she huffed through them. "I have to! You don't understand!"

"I understand your daughter is in there, and the fire department is almost here! We can't risk-"

_**BOOM!**_

Another explosion, this one bigger than the last, rocked the entire block. The crowd across the street recoiled back as glass showered into the road. The woman threw the officers aside, yelling out. "Ashley!"

A crash came from the far wall, and a giant ball came barreling through. It fell to the street, rolling into the wall of the next building, The smell of burning hair hung thick in the air as the ball uncurled to reveal the giant squirrel, Ashley still clinging to her waist.

"OK." Doreen panted inside, soot and ash on her face. "I _never_ want to do that again."

"Ashley!" The woman cane running up and plucked the unharmed girl out of her lap. "You're safe!"

"Mommy!"

The two walked off, the woman apparently not deterred by her savior. The three cops, on the other hand…not so much.

"Umm…thanks?"

Doreen looked up to see the three officers standing over her, confused looks on their faces. No doubt that this wasn't in any of their protocols. "Need a hand?" one of them said.

"Uh...yeah. Thank you." She took his hand to get to her feet. The adrenaline of almost dying in a fiery explosion was starting to wear off, and she started to get nervous. "Sorry, gentlemen. Gotta go! Got business to take care of!" With that, she jumped up to the wall and started climbing, going over the roof out of sight of the police.

"So." The main officer turned to his two cadets. "Who wants to tell the chief about this?"

The short one scoffed at him as the fire truck started spraying down the building. "Yeah, if you think I'm going to tell him about a human sized squirrel going around and saving people, you have another think coming."

"I'm just saying!" The main one walked off after the two. "We can draw straws!"

As they went out of sight, Doreen fell flat against the roof and removed her helmet. She took in a deep breath of cool air. She was spent.

"Why did you not pay attention to Karmi when she was explaining fire safety to you, Doreen?" she said to herself. "Why?"

She heard the ironic squeaking from behind her and sighed. "That was a rhetorical question, Tippy-Toe. But I didn't see _you_ pulling anyone out of the building."

A loud roar came from behind her, jolting Doreen out of her argument. She slowly stood up again and turned on the spot.

What met her eyes was something out of a comic book. A mammoth lizard/bug/ugly creature was off on her right, crackling with some sort of electricity all throughout its body. On her left was a green mech, three eyes on its head, spikes on its back, and claws at the ready as it let out its own roar.

"Tippy-Toe."

The squirrel chirped once.

"I think I'm gonna sit this one out."

* * *

_Meanwhile…_

Granville could only watch as the mech rose up from the water, ready to take on the new creature. She had only seen it once when the Kentucky Kaiju was commandeered by Noodle Burger Boy, but she knew that it was the property of Fred. She wasn't really a fan of massive amounts of potential property damage, but she was at a loss as to what else to do.

The sound of a strap being undone caught her attention, and she turned to the patient in the bed, who was now sitting up and removing the IV from her arm. "Ms. Parker, what do you think you're doing?"

"I have to go. I have to help Big Hero 6."

"No, you are not." She sat her hand on her shoulder. "You have gone through a terrible ordeal. You cannot go out there."

"Professor."

Peni's tone was calm, but it was betrayed by the fire in her eyes. "You have been a very gracious host for us. You have gone far and beyond what any other person has done in my life save for my family and team. However, if I have to crawl into S.P.I.D.E.R. and break out of this building, I will."

Her feet his the ground as she bent her arm over her chest to stretch it out. "Professor, this is what the S.P.I.D.E.R. project is all about. This is what it was made to do. This is what _I_ was made to do. This is my mistake. I have to fix it, or go down trying. I need you to understand this."

Granville stared at her, her face frozen. After a moment, she bent down to her level. "Do you remember when I told Mr. Hamada that you are very much like him, Ms. Parker?"

"Um..."

The dean smiled weakly, amused by her expression. "Youare aware that I am perfectly capable of figuring out when my door is not closed? It seems the apple does not fall very far from the tree. I was mistaken, Ms. Parker. You are _not _very much like Mr. Hamada..."

She slowly stepped out of the way, her grin now evident.

"You are _exactly_ like Mr. Hamada. And that is a good thing."

Peni, her path clear, started to climb up into her robot. As she sat back into her chair, she put her neck into the cushion, ready to be attached directly...but the small sound of metal hitting metal blocked her path.

"Hmm?"

She put her hand on the back of her neck and felt her spider on the port. "What in the world?"

This was weird. Her robot wasn't built for that purpose; it was merely something she fooled around with. But now that she was thinking about it…

Peni hit the remaining part of the clip on her hair. She felt a small buzz go through her neck, but to her surprise, the systems in S.P.I.D.E.R. booted up. It stood up from its knees, ready to move.

"...Wireless." She poked at her projected keyboard, a few screens popping up with power levels and weapons systems. "I can connect to S.P.I.D.E.R. wirelessly using the mini-robot. The tiny machinations lowers the amount of electricity that gets pumped into my body. That's..."

"Brilliant?"

Peni looked down at Granville, who was busy at her own console. "Why did I not think of that?"

"I suppose you have Mr. Hamada to thank. He is the reason why you are no longer in a coma."

She glanced at the exit door where he had walked out some time ago. "I wish I could see him. I wish I could thank him."

"Be careful what you wish for, Ms. Parker. You just may get it."

The back wall opened slowly, the air rushing in from outside. Granville and Peni shared a look, and both nodded.

"Ms. Parker...be on your guard. And be careful."

The cockpit door closed with a whoosh, and S.P.I.D.E.R ran out, shooting a web to slingshot out of sight. The dean looked down at her vitals on the computer. All good so far.

That left only one thing left to do. She pulled out her phone, set it on the counter, and slid her finger on the screen just like before. After a second, her screen lit up with the red number.

"Mr. Hamada, you have a problem..."

* * *

"Yeah, what else is new?"

The Kaiju lurched back, barely avoiding another tentacle. The entire team was inside, each seated at their own customized seat. Hiro and Fred (mostly Hiro) had spent the last rebuild of the giant mech making a control center where everyone would be involved with the piloting. Hiro was seated in the center, Fred flanking his left and Go Go on his right. Wasabi and Honey Lemon were in the next row back, and Baymax was locked into place standing behind them. Go Go's discs and Honey Lemon's purse each had their own slots for their power, which even the Korean had to admit was a nice touch.

Not openly, of course.

Maybe later...when they weren't fighting a giant electrical creature.

"_Mr. Hamada, it sounds like you need back-up."_

"Well, we're losing power every time that thing hits us!" Wasabi shouted, butting into the call. "So we could definitely use someone else."

"_Ms. Parker is en route."  
_

"What!?" Hiro yelled. "Professor, you said you would keep her there."

"_I said that I would keep her safe, which I have. She was quite adamant on finishing what she had started."_

"She can't be here! It's not safe!"

"Hiro, focus!" Go Go shouted. "It's coming back!"

A claw came and hit its shoulder, throwing the Kaiju back a couple of blocks. The creature retracted it back, its voice burning the air. _**"Tonight at eleven! Are your cats TOO LOUD?"**_

"I really..._really_ wish this thing would shut up," Go Go muttered.

"It's feeding off of the city's energy." Honey Lemon glanced down at her own console. "We can try luring it away, but it's pulled too much. It's already self-sustaining."

"Well, throw it into the water then!" Go Go thrust her thumb behind them at the bay. "Water conducts electricity, right? If we throw it deep enough off shore, it will lose its structure and disperse."

"And kill all of the fish in the bay, probably. I'm sure some people would be against that."

"Oh yeah. Your girlfriend amongst them, Wasabi? I really don't care at this point," Go Go shot back.

"Hey, at least think of all of the sushi you could make with it."

"Not helping, Fred."

"We can't, anyway." Hiro pointed outside, where Addy's robot was still around the center of the chest. "There's no telling what that surge would do to both Addy and Michael. If we overload them, it would probably kill them instantly. We can't do that. We need to find a way around that."

"_Hiro, I have detected a number of appendages coming our way."  
_

"How many?"

He looked up to see his entire sight filled with blue energy.

"_...A large number."_

Hiro held his hands in front of his face, bracing for impact.

But said impact never came.

"Umm, Hiro?"

Honey Lemon pointed to the window, where he was expecting to see tentacles and electricity. Instead, he saw the head of the creature turned off to the right, its body being tied together by some sort of...web? Hiro quickly brought up one of the outside cameras to see his cousin's robot on the rooftop, continuing to shoot webs at the creature.

"_Hey, guys! Nice mech you got there! It would be a shame if some ugly thing mucked it all up!"_

"Peni..." Hiro whispered.

"_Sorry! What was that? You should work on your comms; they're coming in really-Ugh!"_

A random claw came screaming at her, but she managed to jump out of the way just in the nick of time.

"_Too slow!" _S.P.I.D.E.R. landed on another rooftop, its right leg sparking. _"Need to do better than that!"  
_

It did indeed do better than that, a tentacle slapping its stomach and sending the robot screaming into the night.

"_Peni!"_ Hiro jolted up out of his seat, heading for the emergency exit. "Fred, take manual control! I have to go check on her."

Fred simply nodded. "That's an affirmative, Captain."

He didn't bother to check if he was making a pirate pun or just referring to his superhero name, because he was already out of the cockpit and hitting the ground, making his way toward the park.

* * *

"_Ow."_

S.P.I.D.E.R.'s cockpit door flew open and Peni crawled out, rubbing her head. That last hit hurt a lot, but she didn't feel any broken bones in her body. She would probably have to reboot the motor systems, but otherwise it looked fine. She poked a few keys to start the override and stood up to get her bearings.

There was a tremendous gorge made from S.P.I.D.E.R.'s landing and subsequent travel in the ground. Sighing, she brushed her hair out of her eyes. "I will have to remind myself to pay back the city for the damage."

She heard panting coming from behind her, and she turned to see the purple-armored leader of Big Hero 6 running up to her. She stared as he stopped to catch his breath, hearing him mutter something about not being in shape as he set his hands on his knees.

Peni could barely contain her excitement as he stood up fully, clasping her hands together. "It's you! You're my idol, Mr. Big Hero 6!"

"I'm not...whatever," he said, waving his hand. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine." Peni pointed at S.P.I.D.E.R. with her thumb. "He'll be back up and running in no time."

"You have to leave."

"Huh?"

"You can't be here." He narrowed his eyes at her. "You're going to get yourself killed."

"And if the city is saved, that's something that I'm willing to do." Peni saw that the reboot was complete and set her foot on the robot, ready to get back in. "I can help you fight this thing."

His hand came down on her wrist, grasping it tightly.

"I can't let you do that."

She turned back around to stare at him. "Who's going to stop me? You?"

He let go, and in a fit of anger, put his hands on either side of his helmet. He lifted it off of his head and set it under his arm, the black messy hair pointing every which way.

Just like hers.

"Yeah. Me."

Peni's brain stopped working. Every single thought about rejoining the battle, fixing her robot, and saving the day jettisoned out of her mind. She could only stare at the face in front of her. The one that she had seen just a little while ago running out of the facility. The one that she had confided in while on her trip here.

And now he was here.

"...Hiro?"

* * *

All five occupants of the Kaiju looked at each other, Peni's voice of disbelief coming over the comm.

"Oh boy," Wasabi whispered.

* * *

"_Mr. Hamada, you need to focus. You have-"_

Hiro didn't care about Granville breaking through with her opinion. Or the team's. He pressed the button on his side of his helmet, shutting off the comm. It was just him and Peni now.

She was still staring at him, a look of aghast on her face. It looked like she was still trying to process everything that had happened in the past ten seconds, and this was the time for him to make his case.

"Peni, please. I'm begging you." His knees hit the ground as he pointed at the robot behind her. "Get into S.P.I.D.E.R. Get out of here. Go home. We'll take care of this."

Hiro started breathing hard, his eyes diverted away. "I can't let you go out there, Peni. I'm not going to let anyone else get hurt. Especially not you."

Now it was her hand on his body, his shoulder to be precise. The grip was firm, but the tips of her fingers were trembling.

"Hiro. I have to do this. This is my fault. Addy is trapped in there because of me. Do you know what it's like to see someone you...you care about trapped in a body that's not theirs?"

Karmi's mutant face flashed in Hiro's mind, the memory rushing back to him. "Yeah. Yeah, I do." His hands laid flat against the dirt. "And that's exactly why you can't go out there. If you get hurt again...I don't know what I would do."

Peni looked away, not sure what to say. It was actually quite comical that they could have this conversation while the battle was still raging on in the background. Or it would have been if it wasn't real life.

"Hiro, do you know what I have in my bedroom at home?"

He didn't know what she was getting at, but it sounded like it was important. "What?"

Peni waved her hand in front of her. "On my wall, right across from my bed...is a poster of Big Hero 6."

Hiro's eyes widened.

"I had been working on the S.P.I.D.E.R. project for a couple of years when it was relaunched. We were stuck in a rut. Minimal progress being made, obstructions around every turn. I was frustrated. At times, I felt like giving up. Last year, during the summer, I came this close to quitting entirely. And then you know what I saw?"

Peni took a step closer. "I saw the news from San Fransokyo of a group of people who saved the city. A group of superheroes that went out of their way to help people in need. And I was out of my mind with happiness. I had always been a fan of comics, of fantasy worlds, and even of Boss Awesome, but finally. Finally...heroes that I could look up to. That I could relate to. That group inspired me. You're a big part of the reason why I dove back into the project with a renewed sense of passion. I wanted to be just like that group of people who protected their city. I wanted to do that the same way my father did. I want to do the best I can...the way he would have wanted me to."

"I _chose_ this. I want to be a hero, just like you. You have helped me so much in the little time that I've been here. You and your friends. And I want to give that help back."

She knelt down next to him, looking him square in the eye. "And I cannot do that if you do not let me."

He clenched his fist at his side, his knuckles laying in the dirt. "Peni, I can't-"

"Hiro, you have given me the power to make a difference in this world."

Peni held out her hand, setting it atop Hiro's oversized glove.

"Now let me have the responsibility of seeing it through."

Hiro stared at his cousin. The words were eloquent, sure, but they struck a chord with him. It was similar to what he had said to himself before embarking on this weird journey of his.

"Your life's never going to be normal again."

Peni softly chuckled. "Hiro, I have an IQ of 150, and I'm trapped inside the body of a fourteen-year-old girl piloting a giant robot. As Aunt May likes to say to me, that proverbial ship has sailed a long time ago."

Hiro had to laugh at that. "That's true." He brought his arm up to clash her outstretched one, pulling him up to his feet. "OK. Let's do this then. I don't know what 'this' is, but we're doing it."

"You do not have a plan?"

"I sort of have a plan." Hiro slapped his helmet back on his head. "Just not one that will work. We were thinking about short-circuiting it by getting it into the bay, but I don't know what that would do to Michael and Addy."

"Then we would need to remove them."

"Huh?"

Peni framed the creature with her fingers, her tongue sticking out. "Hardlight technology like Michael was making is very resistant to damage. That, coupled with the electricity, has made it a formidable foe. My webs are somewhat resistant to it, so I can attach to it. If I can break through the aura..." She glanced back at S.P.I.D.E.R. "But I would need something with a lot of force to project me at V.E.N.O.M. Something greater than what I can provide by myself."

"Well..." Hiro nodded his head at the Kaiju. "I can help with that."

Peni tilted her head, confused.

* * *

_Thirty seconds later…_

"How do you travel like this? I hate it!"

"_Not all of us have the preferences of going around on thrusters. Plus, this lowers the emissions I produce as a whole."  
_

"Yeah." Hiro turned his head away, his stomach churning. "I'm about to emit my lunch out of my body in a second."

Not having Baymax at his immediate disposal, Hiro had enlisted Peni to get him back to his friends. Peni climbed into the cockpit, and Hiro used his magnetic gloves to latch onto the robot's back. What he _hadn't_ taken into account was the ride was not as smooth as it would've been on Baymax. The swinging was getting to him, and not in a good way.

"_Hold on, we are almost there."_

S.P.I.D.E.R. swung for the final time, flinging itself high in the air before landing squarely on the Kaiju's shoulder. The robot's hand grabbed Hiro and lowered it into the open eye of the mech's control center. _"Special delivery! One Big Hero 6 leader, hot and ready."_

Hiro quickly moved back to his chair. "Sorry, guys. I had to take care of something."

"Like you telling your cousin who you were?"

"...Oh." He turned his head to the right to stare at Go Go. "You heard that?"

"Some of it. What you said was very heartfelt, Hiro," Honey Lemon said from behind him. "Does she know about all of us?"

"_I figured that part out on our way here, yes."  
_

Peni's portrait appeared on all of their consoles, her eyes narrowed in concentration. _"After Hiro showed his identity to me, it was easy to surmise everyone else's. __But I have to say it is truly an honor__ to be fighting alongside you all."_

"Yeah, you can bask in our glory later," Go Go joked. "Did you guys come up with a plan as you were pouring each other's hearts out?"

"We did," Hiro said.

"_But you are not going to like it."_

Go Go shook her head, amused. "Wow. You two want to stand in a hallway and be creepy toward kids riding their mini bikes around?"

"Huh?"

"Before your time. Now, c'mon. What'd you come up with?"

* * *

"_The thinking is that Addy and Michael are the brains of the creature. If we remove them from the body, the creature will lose its structural integrity. That will give your mech an opportunity to push it into the bay, completing its dispersion."_

"_And how exactly are you going to get them out of there?"  
_

"_You are going to throw me at it."_

_"I'm sorry. I must have heard you wrong. It sounded like you said to throw you at it."  
_

"_I...was not being sarcastic."_

"_Wasabi, her web is resistant to the electricity. If she can make her entire body resistant, and with enough force, she can puncture the aura and grab V.E.N.O.M. out of her body and shoot out the other side. We can move that thing around so that it's facing across the bay. She can web sling over the bay onto the other side of the bridge."_

"_So a Fastball Special? Awesome!"  
_

"_Fred, we don't speak Nerd."_

"_Exactly. It is just like Captain Fancy #95, where he throws Bulkhead into a giant alien invader and tore out its heart."_

"_See? And you guys said comics never solved problems!"  
_

The Kaiji stomped to the edge of the land mass, turning around to face the creature following them. "Peni, I have a question about this plan."

"_Yes, Honey Lemon?"  
_

"If we throw you toward the bay, and you land in the water, we can't push it in. You'll get electrocuted. You wouldn't make it."

"_That is a possibility."_ Peni pressed a few buttons on her keyboard. _"All I can say is that I had better be correct in my calculations."_

The creature roared and started running toward the Kaiji. There was no more time to think. They had to try now.

"Go Go, evasive maneuvers!"

The Korean threw her lever forward. With the speed much faster than before, the mech slid out of the way, the creature stumbling past it.

"Honey Lemon, hold it down!"

A giant ball launched at its two lower tentacles, gumming up its movement. Screaming louder, the creature shot out its arms at the team.

"Wasabi!"

"On it!"

The claws started glowing green, and the Kaiju stepped forward, dodging appendages everywhere. It slashed at the chest of the beast, making some indentations in it. Not very deep, Hiro saw, but it would help in the process.

"Peni. You're up."

S.P.I.D.E.R. landed on the Kaiju's hand, its web shooters at the ready. _"I am ready. I am optimistic that you know how to throw me."  
_

Its claws clenched around the slender body, careful not to crush the girl inside. "Hope you have a barf bag in there," Hiro quipped.

"_I do not, but that is an interesting addition I will consider."_

"Fred, try not to kill my cousin, OK?"

He gave him a thumbs up from beside him. "One non-deceased family member, coming right up!" Fred pulled the lever on his right. Hiro felt the Kaiju take a giant step back, and with all the force it could muster, threw S.P.I.D.E.R. right at its chest.

Hiro saw the robot twirl in the air, the web spinning a makeshift shield right in front of its head. And it looked like Fred's aim was true; she was heading straight for V.E.N.O.M. and Michael.

"Come on."

With the force of a bullet, the web shield wrapped around the torso of the black and white robot, pushing it with S.P.I.D.E.R. out of the back of the creature, shattering the aura around the entire body. Hiro saw the two continue their path over the water, and they went out of sight under the bridge.

"Come on."

* * *

Hiro was right. Maybe she should put in some sort of waste receptacle inside the cockpit.

Provided she lived long enough to build it.

She adjusted herself, the cargo of V.E.N.O.M. still underneath one of her robot's arms. She threw the hand up to shoot out another web on the underside of the bridge...and the last cartridge jammed.

"Oh, you have to be kidding me right now."

Her head hit the back of the chair, trying to keep it steady. This was it. She wasn't going to make it. Out of anger, she punched the console as hard as she could.

Which caused the system to right itself, the message coming up that it was ready.

The web shot out, connecting to the bridge. Her momentum and temporary pause caused her body to barely skim the surface of the water, but the upswing was enough to throw her up in the air.

She was going to make it to land.

But it was going to hurt.

_WHAM!_

Without any way to brace her fall, S.P.I.D.E.R. slammed into the ground, her cocooned cargo rolling a short distance away. Her head screaming in pain, Peni pressed the comm button in front of her. "Hiro, I'm here! I'm on land! Do it!"

* * *

Hiro slammed the large red button in front of him, her confirmation all he needed to hear. "Baymax, double Kaiju Rocket Fist!"

Baymax raised both of his arms, cables wired straight to the mainframe. _"Firing."_

The Kaiju also raised its hands, and the claws at the end shot out forward, catching the creature in its shoulders. The legs broke free of Honey Lemon's ball, the thrusters pushing it toward the bay.

"Time to take a swim, M.O.R.B.I.U.S.!"

With one final roar, the creature fell onto its back into the water. Without any aura helping keep its structure, the electricity got sent out in one gigantic shock wave around the city. Buildings began losing power as it spread from the epicenter, including the Kaiju.

The mech lurched forward, and the team did as well inside. Luckily, they were all wearing their seat belts.

"Ouch."

All except one.

Hiro shook his head and looked outside, ignoring the upside down Fred next to him. It was eerily quiet, not a single light shining in the city. It looked like an EMP had gone off. But after a few seconds, lights started coming back on.

"Everyone OK?"

The groans behind him were enough to ease his worry.

And then Hiro remembered.

He hit the comm button on his helmet, hoping it was still working. "Peni, you need to get Addy and Michael detached from V.E.N.O.M. before the power fully comes back! Otherwise, we're going to have the same problem!"

"_On it."  
_

* * *

Peni was already out of S.P.I.D.E.R., it having been temporarily disabled from the EMP shock wave. The webbing around V.E.N.O.M.'s body near the shore had already dissolved, leaving the robot motionless on the ground. Michael had already slipped out of his temporary prison, still on the ground. It didn't look like he was going to wake up any time soon.

Which only left Addy.

She got to the head and reached for the emergency release on the hatch...and promptly got yanked backward.

"Gah!"

She was raised in the air by V.E.N.O.M., now fully awake again. She was staring into its green eyes as it stood up to its full height.

"_**You think you are smart! But you are meaningless! We will persevere without you in the picture!"**_

Peni struggled to break free from its grasp. "Addy! I know that you are in there! This is not you! You have to fight this!"

"_**She no longer needs you! She only needs us!"**_

"You're right. She's never needed me."

V.E.N.O.M. cocked its head to the side.

"She took my project and made it better. Stronger. And you are proof of that." Tears were pouring down her face. "And I never told her that because I thought myself superior. I realize now that she is in every way better than me. And I can only hope that I can learn from her."

Peni stared into her captor's eyes, her emotions running over. "Addy. I hope that you can forgive me, even though I do not deserve it in any way. You have every right to be angry with me, but please. Give me a chance to make things right."

Its hand twitched against her neck.

"Addy, I want to work alongside you. Together. Until the time comes that we can work no more."

She choked out her last words, losing the little breath she had left.

"Addy...I love you."

Her body got thrown down to the ground as V.E.N.O.M. took a step back, its arms now at its head. Peni was gasping for air right beside S.P.I.D.E.R., staring as the robot went on the fritz, sparks flying everywhere.

"_**GAHHH!"**_

With a sudden lurch, V.E.N.O.M. fell again to the ground, the deactivated body twitching. Peni's heavy breathing was the only thing that punctured the air as she got up and ran to it, opening the hatch. Slowly, and as carefully as she could, she dragged Addy's body toward her robot.

"Wake up, Addy." She cradled her head in her lap. "Please wake up."

Something did wake up...but it wasn't the girl.

Peni felt the sand move beneath her legs, but looked up too late: V.E.N.O.M. was back up again, a new mouth on its face, green cords serving as the tongue. It started dripping fluids as it stared the two down.

"_**No! We must have her! We need her to be complete!"** _It reached out with its hand to grab a hold of her. Peni, energy spent, could do nothing but shield her body over Addy…

But the hand never came.

Confused, Peni looked up to see a gray and red arm in front of her, snatching the arm out of the way. She looked behind her to see-

"...S.P.I.D.E.R.?"

Her robot was indeed standing behind her, Peni in its shadow. It was staring down V.E.N.O.M. as it struggled against her robot's grasp.

"**You...will not...harm...them."**

It drew the hand back and tossed V.E.N.O.M aside, shooting a web trap onto its body. Now stuck, it could only roar in anger as it wildly tried to break free.

"_**No! You are not worthy of our power! You cannot stop us! You-"  
**_

All of a sudden, its entire body was encased in ice, cutting off its latest speech.

"_You..._talk too much."

Peni looked beyond the body to see Baymax landing on the beach, the rest of the group jumping down off of him. Hiro was running toward her and slid down next to them. "Peni! Are you all right?"

She couldn't respond, only looking down at Addy's head. She felt Honey Lemon kneel next to her and press her fingers against her wrist. "She's alive. Just unconscious."

"Michael is, too." Wasabi's voice said from behind them. "But he looks a little worse for wear."

"_I shall alert the proper medical services."_

Hiro stared at Peni's face, noting the tears that were on her cheeks. "Hey. It's OK. You saved the day. You saved the city. How does it feel to succeed in your first act as a hero?"

A soft sprinkle started to come down from the sky, the drops hitting her head. Peni looked from his eyes, to S.P.I.D.E.R.'s now deactivated body, to Fred and the others to her right, and then back at the girl in her lap, brushing a drop off of her cheek.

"I feel...exhausted. Is being a hero always this tiring?"

The group laughed around them, and Hiro put his arm around her body, his hand on her shoulder. "Yes. It is. But you get used to it after a while..."

* * *

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** So.

That happened.

Again, apologies for this being somewhat late. Had to hash out a few things, including that ending scene. I'll probably be getting a few questions about my choices there.

But I won't be answering any of those questions here. The explanations will come at the end. I promise.

Speaking of the end, the finale, **The Web We Weave**, will be up "soon". I haven't decided on whether it will be next week, given the holidays, or the following one. Either way, you don't want to miss it.

Read and review, if you like. Until next time, everyone.


	8. The Web We Weave (Finale)

_**Disclaimer:** Big Hero 6 is owned by Disney Animation, Peni is owned by Marvel and others (I assume), and the others are owned by others more._

_But who are those "others"? You'll find out. Buckle in, people. It's going to be a long one._

* * *

_**Chapter 7 – The Web We Weave (Finale)**  
_

It had been quite a while since Hiro and his friends had gone all out for the city of San Fransokyo. Yes, they were still fugitives, but that never stopped them from doing the right thing. That was all the more evident with what happened that night. Saving the city was exhilarating as always, but something about seeing your cousin pilot a robot and fight alongside you to destroy a giant creature made of electricity made it both physically and emotionally draining, and that was made painfully clear when he, Peni, and Baymax arrived back at the Lucky Cat Cafe in the late hours of the evening.

The three had been freed from the campus's lockdown, as had everyone else after Big Hero 6 and Peni defeated M.O.R.B.I.U.S. As soon as they entered the door, Aunt Cass was upon them, wrapping her arms around them in a frenzied rush.

Both Hiro and Peni had just taken it, too exhausted from earlier. Baymax stood there unblinkingly, his batteries still low from all of his activity. Thankfully, Aunt Cass had sent them off to bed without much of an argument, telling them they would be treated to a large breakfast tomorrow.

And raspberry scones. A _lot_ of them, from what Hiro could tell by the giant pile that they passed in the kitchen on the way upstairs.

He had flopped over onto his bed, not even bothering to shower or brush or change. He could take care of that in the morning. Baymax had already retreated to his charging port and was in sleep mode.

But he heard tapping from his left, and he had opened his eyes to see Peni scrolling through the news sites. They were just updating with the evening headlines, and every single one had the same thing: _New Recruit Helps Big Hero 6 Save The Day!_

"I was not aware that I was recruited into the ranks of your team," she muttered, scrolling down the page.

"Yeah, we operate on a 'trial-by-fire' basis." Hiro pressed his face into his pillow. "Nothing better than first-hand experience, right?"

Peni softly laughed as her eyes read through one of the articles. "Who is this 'Captain Cutie' that they keep referring to? Is that you?"

"...I told them to stop doing that. I guess they didn't listen." Hiro turned over onto his back and folded his arms on his stomach. "That's the name Karmi made up for me in her fanfiction."

"I am confused. Does she not know about you and your heroics?"

"No. She doesn't."

"And Aunt Cass?"

"Nope."

Peni closed the browser down, but stared at the desktop for the moment, her eyes filled with the bowling alley photo. "Do any of them know? Your other friends?"

Hiro pointed to the blue-haired girl next to them in the picture. "She does. Aspen. It would be hard not for her to know, because she ended up saving us from drowning in the wreckage of the Fathom base."

Her eyes grew wide. "I remember hearing about it on the news when it happened. The reporters could not get near because of the police, but several did recall seeing you and the others there. Is it true that you befriended a mermaid as well?"

"A...No. That's not true."

"Oh."

"You sound disappointed."

Peni looked off to the side. "I have been keeping up with your exploits ever since the events at Krei Tech. I was very excited with all of the adventures you had, including with what happened with that corporation a couple of months ago. I should have known that particular bit of news was false."

"I mean..." Hiro glanced over at the screen. "Aspen's not a mermaid. We _think_."

She looked at him wide-eyed. "I beg your pardon?"

"Peni," he cut her off. "Let's just go to sleep. I promise to tell you all about it in the morning, OK?"

"Very well." She got up off of the chair and started walking toward the other bed. Hiro grabbed the sheet, ready to pull it over him.

"Is there any particular reason why you have not told her about it?"

Hiro didn't need her to explain her question. He already knew what she was talking about.

"I don't want her to get hurt. She's already gotten kidnapped once because of me. I'm not going to put her in harm's way again."

Silence.

"I'll tell her when the time is right. But with her overseas...it's just better this way."

There was still no response, so Hiro tilted his head back to see Peni at the edge of the separator, still staring at him. "What?"

"It is nothing," she replied. "I do not agree with what you said. I will, however, respect your decision, because it is not my decision to make. I hope...I hope that one day she will be able to know about all of the great things you have done."

"She will." Hiro put his head on the pillow, closing his eyes. "One day."

He heard the creak of Tadashi's bed, followed by the sound of the covers being moved. "Good night, Hiro."

"G'night."

* * *

The next day was a much needed break for everyone. Hiro and Peni had walked downstairs to learn from Wasabi that Professor Granville had closed campus for the day due to repair of the institute's power system. She also made mention that included Peni in it, so the group suddenly found themselves with a free day of nothing to do.

But there were several other matters that needed to be attended to, which the two teen geniuses were caught up on over their giant plates of eggs, toast, and sausage (veggie in Peni's case).

"The Mystery of the Disappearing Kaiju", as Fred dubbed it, had mystified both the city and the team alike, and he wasn't telling what he had done with the giant mech. Well, _Hiro _knew, but he wasn't going to say anything, even under threat of dismemberment by Go Go. Bluff Dunder had mentioned sending the channel's investigative team to find clues on the morning news, an aside that earned a chuckle from Hiro.

S.P.I.D.E.R. had made its way back to the safety of the warehouse on campus under the cover of night, and its existence had excited everyone in the city.

Well, _almost_ everyone.

Chief Cruz was once again on the television and saying how he was going to get to the bottom of "that superhero criminal". Oxymoron aside, Peni glared at the TV for far too long, so much so that Hiro had to block it with his hand.

"Don't worry about him. He's just blowing hot air."

"I still do not like that man."

Luckily, Cruz was going to be preoccupied for a little bit. It turns out that High Voltage had again escaped from prison, apparently overjoyed that they were the singular electric supervillains of the city again. They had even left a note for Big Hero 6 in their cell, specifically thanking them for defeating the giant creature.

That wasn't going to help with Cruz's mindset. But knowing that it bothered him made Hiro feel slightly better.

All six of their phones vibrated simultaneously, and they were greeted with a message from Professor Granville with an update on both Addy and Michael. They had been admitted to the hospital, government agents apparently swearing them to secrecy due to their projects. As of this morning, they were both resting after emergency surgery to remove their techs; however, neither of them had waken from their medically-induced comas. His father had arrived there at some time in the night, and had not left since.

Hiro swore he could've heard Peni's phone vibrate a second time, but she had brought her phone down under the table and away from his eyes. She looked lost in thought as she nibbled on her next piece of toast.

"What's up?"

Peni glanced over at him. "It is nothing."

"Nah, it's not."

"I am just worried about Addy. That is all."

"Peni." Hiro pointed between everyone at the table. "There's one thing that we all have in common here. We're all terrible liars."

"Hey, I'm not a terrible liar!"

"No you're not, Fred," Wasabi said, sipping his cup. "You're just a bad one."

"And she's the worst one of all," Go Go added as she pointed to a glaring Honey Lemon.

"So we can tell when someone's not telling us the truth. So, I will repeat...what's up?"

Peni looked down at the table, gently setting her phone next to her plate. She didn't speak for a moment, only studying the remnants of her breakfast.

"Professor Granville has offered me the grant that would allow me to enroll into SFIT."

Honey Lemon squealed and put her hand on her shoulder. "That's great, Peni! Congratulations!"

"Thank you."

"You...don't sound excited about it."

"I am." Peni shuffled her body in the chair. "Excited, happy...but I am also conflicted."

Wasabi raised his eyebrow at her. "I thought this is what you wanted."

"I thought so as well. But after everything that has happened here, I am no longer sure of what I want to do. I know that NYIT has offered me a grant as well, but I had delayed that decision until my visit here was over. Plus..." She trailed off, her gaze out the window.

"Plus what?"

She didn't answer her cousin, instead turning back toward the table. "What do you believe I should do?"

"I know!" Fred said, pulling out a comic. "Captain Fancy had to make a life and death choice between the love of his life and his sidekick in issue #76, but he chose the third option and fused them together into a _super sidekick love interest!_ He-"

His face slowly got pushed aside by Go Go's hand, relieving them of his offering. "Yeah, there's a lot of things that comics can solve, and I'm sure you're going to _painstakingly_ talk about them later, but something like this isn't one of them."

"Go Go's right, Peni," Honey Lemon said. "It's _your_ decision, not ours. You need to do what's best for you. As as your friends, we'll support you in whatever you choose."

"...I am your friend?"

The Latina nodded, a warm smile on her face. Peni blinked rapidly. "I...I have never had friends before. This is an interesting development."

"You know what else is an interesting development?" Fred pulled his phone out for everyone to see. "Mole's having an event at his comic store! We can totally go down there and rub our superhero knowledge in his face! Meet you there!" He ran out of the cafe before anyone could respond, launching himself across the street in two giant steps.

Go Go rubbed her temple, clearly annoyed. Peni leaned into Hiro, whose hand was on his forehead. "This comic store. It is not run by an actual mole, correct?"

* * *

Peni had gotten what she had needed: socialization, advice, friendship...and an opportunity to fill her suitcase with an absurd amount of comics to take home. It had been a full day of events and relaxation, Hiro's friends helping with her predicament in their own separate and special ways.

But by the time they arrived at school the next day, he could see that she was still thinking hard about her options. He couldn't blame her; this was a decision that would change her life for the immediate future. And as Aunt Cass pulled away from the roundabout, Peni was staring at the arched entrance of the campus.

"You OK?"

Peni let out a small sigh. "Hiro, when the others arrive here, can I request that you and they meet me in Professor Granville's office for my one o'clock meeting? I wish for you to be there for it."

Normally, he wouldn't be too keen for being in the dean's office, but this sounded important. "Sure."

And that's where we kick off things now.

"So, Ms. Parker, I understand you have made a decision."

In her office.

"I have, Professor."

...Willingly.

Peni stood in front of her desk, her arms behind her back. She was looking rather nervous from Hiro's point of view.

"Was it necessary to bring Mr. Hamada and your friends with you?"

"I believed that it was important for them to attend. As you said, they are my...friends."

The dean closed her laptop, slightly amused. "Very well, Ms. Parker. I will let you have the proverbial floor."

Peni straightened up. Hiro saw her fingers clasped, probably to try to deter the shaking.

"Professor Granville, it is humbling and an honor for you to extend an offer for me to be a student of the San Fransokyo Institute of Technology. However..."

Peni bent her head down to bow to the dean.

"I am afraid that I must respectfully decline."

Hiro must have had a shocked look on his face, because Granville glanced behind the girl before returning to Peni. "And if I may ask, Ms. Parker, why is it that you are declining?"

She took a small peek behind her at Hiro and his friends before responding. "Professor, I have nothing against your school. I believe that it can offer me a lot of valuable resources and information that would benefit my future."

Peni looked straight at Granville. It looked like she had gathered enough of her nerve to explain. "But I also know that my future extends beyond studies. I wish to be a hero. Someone that others can look up to. And I cannot do that here. Hiro...he and his friends are this city's protectors. I do not wish to impede on that. I wish to make my own path. And I believe that path is in Neo York and at NYIT. I believe I can make a difference there, both academically and otherwise. So, having said all of that...I am sorry that I will not be accepting your offer."

Granville listened to all she had to say, her arms folded over the desk. Once Peni was finished, she smiled. "Ms. Parker, there is nothing to apologize for. I am, of course, a little disappointed that you will not be joining our ranks, but perhaps it is a blessing in disguise. You will be receiving a great education at NYIT, you will continue to protect and serve…"

She glanced at Hiro again. "And I will not have to worry about _two_ Hamadas running around causing trouble."

Everyone shared a laugh, and the dean got up from her chair. "I imagine that your aunt and uncle will be pleased that you will be returning to the opposite coast. And Professor Deol is a fantastic teacher. He will be lucky to have you there. But that does leave the matter of this grant..."

She put a handle on the door to her office.

"So I believe that we need to bring in our other guest."

She opened the door, and in came a girl on her wheelchair. As soon as he saw the hair, Hiro knew exactly who it was.

"Addy!"

And so did Peni.

"Whoa, girl! Calm down!" Addy grimaced as Peni's arms flew around her neck. "Don't scuff up the brand new wheels."

Granville closed the door, answering the unspoken question. "Ms. Brock was released from the hospital last night, and has been resting comfortably at my home. I was even able to help with some of the physical therapy with my swimming pool."

"Wait. Hold up." Hiro held his hands in the air. "Youhave a swimming pool at your house?"

"I don't believe this is the correct time to be discussing that."

"I think this is the _perfect_ time to be discussing this."

Granville ignored him, returning to the front of her desk. "Ms. Brock still has a long way to go in her recovery, but perhaps the guarantee of further education will help with the rehabilitation."

Addy looked at Peni, then back at her. "Wait, what's going on?"

"Ms. Parker has declined the grant for SFIT and will be attending NYIT instead. That means that the grant for here is now yours. Perhaps I should be extending a congratulations?"

"What?" She turned her chair to face Peni, almost taking one of Hiro's toes off. "Peni, why didn't you take it?"

"Addy, you deserve as much of a chance as I do. You can take this, and I'll take the one in Neo York. We'll both have a future."

"Peni."

Addy leaned forward in her wheelchair to stare at her. "I heard what you said to me before you pulled me out of V.E.N.O.M."

Hiro glanced at everyone else's faces, but it didn't seem like they knew what she was talking about either. Peni apparently _did_, because she looked back at Addy incredulously.

"I rag on you a lot, and we've been through the ringer, especially the past few days. But the truth is that...I don't want to be apart from you. You've been the only consistent thing in my life. And that's why I'm about to do something that you'd probably consider very stupid."

Addy leaned back to look at Granville again. "Professor, I'm also declining the grant."

The whole group gasped from behind Hiro. The dean narrowed her eyes at Addy, but didn't respond.

"Professor, she does not mean that," Peni stepped in. "Of course she will take it."

"Peni, stop speaking for me," Addy retorted. "Just because I can't walk for myself doesn't mean I can't talk for myself."

She fell silent as she rolled her wheelchair to the front, staring at Granville. "Professor, I've had a lot of time to think about things. That's really all I _could_ do when lying in a hospital bed eating gelatin around the clock. And I came to realize that while education is important, there are things that are even more important than that. Like...life. And...people."

She took a breath in. "I have so many things that I need to catch up on, and I can't do that here. I want to do it with you, Peni. Before I thought you were pompous and a jerk and a know-it-all..."

"I am still all of those things," Peni murmured from beside her.

"My _point_ is that I've always admired you. And I've held that down underneath of all of the anger and animosity that I had. I was jealous. It wasn't all V.E.N.O.M. that was controlling me. Some part of me...let him. But I don't want to be that person any more."

Addy put her hand on Peni's, sandwiching it on her armrest.

"Can you ever forgive me?"

Hiro couldn't help but feel a little weird. This conversation was going in an unfamiliar direction, the way the two were looking at each other. But Peni speaking up jolted him out of his thoughts.

"I already have." She glanced wildly around the room before refocusing on the girl in the wheelchair. "But Addy, what are you going to do for school? There was only one grant for each place."

"I don't know. I'll think of something. I might have to just go back to high school and I'll apply for some other grant next year."

"Or..."

Everyone turned to the desk. Hiro had completely forgotten that Professor Granville was there. Weird, considering this was her office.

"Perhaps I could be of some assistance to you."

"Professor, you have done _more_ than enough for me. You let me come here, you let me stay at your home, you've given me more opportunities than anyone has ever had. You don't have to do anything else."

"It's too late."

Now everyone was looking at Hiro, who was staring at Granville's smile. He took a step forward as he muttered onward.

"Whatever she's offering...she already did it. Didn't you, Professor?"

The dean leaned back and let out a loud laugh. "Ahh, Mr. Hamada. You always have to spoil the surprise, don't you?"

Ignoring Hiro's oncoming blush, she opened one of the drawers to her desk and pulled out a piece of paper. It looked very fancy, and had some sort of seal of authentication on the top of it.

No. Hiro looked closer. There were _two_. One was definitely familiar; it was the SFIT official seal. So the other one must be-

He drew his breath in surprise, and by Granville's knowing look, he knew what was about to happen.

"What I have here," Granville started, pointing to the paper, "is a document known as a Change of Recipient Institution, slightly modified to fit this unique circumstance. It will allow the funds that constitute this grant to be transferred from the San Fransokyo Institute of Technology..."

She turned the paper around on the desk to face the group.

"To the Neo York Institute of Technology."

"Umm, Professor. Doesn't that require the board for authorization?"

"You would normally be correct, Ms. Rodriguez, but since those funds were technically already allocated, it is left to the executor of the grant to decide what to do with them."

"And you're the executor."

She nodded. "The dean of NYIT, Professor Dinesh Deol, has already electronically signed the document, as have I. The only person that remains...is the recipient of said funds. And that would be you, Ms. Brock."

The girl had her hand over her mouth, the tears already starting to flow down her face. "Professor-"

"Adeline."

Professor Granville straightened up as she cut her off, but it wasn't out of malice. Hiro could see the genuine caring in her eyes.

"Many, many years ago, I was afforded an opportunity that I felt I didn't deserve. There are some days that I still feel I didn't deserve it. But someone decided to take a chance on me. I had nothing to give except all of my determination. And it paid off...because people saw something in me that I did not at the time.

"You are an incredible young lady. And while you no longer have your project, I know that you have the tenacity, the strength, and the character to come up with something even greater. I see a lot of myself in you, Ms. Brock. And I also see an opportunity to pay my due forward. You are every single bit as deserving as Ms. Parker is, and I am not going to let either myself or you pass on it."

By the sudden blowing of her nose, Hiro could tell Honey Lemon was crying behind his body as well.

"I have done a lot of things over the past few days that people will consider questionable." There she was again with the glance. "I will tell you that I would not change a single thing. If I am to be reprimanded for my actions, then so be it. I will take those reprimands in full stride, knowing that you two will go on to do great things in this world...and it starts now."

"I..." Addy had pried her hand off of her mouth just long enough to sputter out some words. "I don't know what to say."

"You do not have to say anything, Ms. Brock. All you have to do..."

Granville clicked her pen open, offering the tail end to Addy.

"...is sign."

She very slowly wheeled up to the desk and grabbed the pen with her shaking hand. It took a little bit, but through her trembling, she was able to get her signature down on the line.

"Very good." The dean took her pen back and admired the form. "I will send this along to Professor Deol, and at this time tomorrow, both you and Ms. Parker will become students of NYIT. Congratulations."

Hiro and his friends started cheering, and Peni and Addy were quick to pull each other into a hug. It was a little difficult with one of them being in a wheelchair, but it didn't matter to either of them. It was a time for celebration.

The two girls pulled apart, seemingly blocking out everyone around them. All they could do was stare into each other's eyes, finally realizing their dreams were about to come true.

And then Peni leaned in.

And Addy did so as well.

Hiro realized what they were going to do about half a second before they actually did it.

And as their lips connected, he could hear the tea kettle that was Honey Lemon's squeal crescendo in the background. She pushed out of his way, her phone at the ready.

"Oh my God! _Emotional-moment selfie!"_

"Please don't grab me," Go Go muttered.

It was already too late, though; her roommate had grabbed her arm and propelled her forward, Go Go giving Hiro a look of frustration before jetting off to join the other girls a few steps ahead.

"Um." Hiro was staring straight ahead, unaware that Fred was leaning on his shoulder next to him. "What just happened?"

Fred only chuckled before stepping ahead to join the rest of the group.

The boy genius wildly looked to his other side, looking for an answer from Wasabi. But he didn't get one from him, who merely shrugged his shoulders.

* * *

It took a little bit, but he finally got it.

He hadn't said anything about it to her, and it was mostly because he hadn't had much experience in that department. He was a robotics guy. A knowledge guy. But he had nothing when it came to...this sort of thing.

So even when the next morning had come around, the celebration in both the Periodic and Lucky Cat Cafes had run their course and Peni and Addy had separated from the rest of the group, Hiro still had a lot of things rumbling around in his mind.

He took the steps to the entrance of the campus, holding back a yawn. He had spent a lot of the night working on something special as a going-away present for Peni, and was all ready to give it to her at breakfast. However, once he set foot downstairs, Aunt Cass had informed him that she took her to school extra early to work on something of her own.

And as he stepped up to the door to the warehouse, the noises going on inside were a dead giveaway as to what exactly _that_ was.

Hiro turned the handle and stepped inside, almost immediately getting blasted back by the music at full volume. Once he got at least his sense of sight back, he saw Peni on top of S.P.I.D.E.R., a wrench in her hand and her head bobbing to the extremely loud tune coming out of her phone.

"Peni!"

She stuck her head in the chassis, evidently not hearing her cousin.

Hiro walked up to the phone on the toolbox and pressed the pause button on the screen. That got her attention automatically.

"Oh. I did not know you came in."

"Probably because you're going to go deaf at the rate you're listening to that." Hiro glanced down at the song choice. "What is this song, anyway? And why is the woman yelling the word 'taco' over and over ago?"

"I am not sure." She jumped down to the floor and brushed her hands on her pants. "I suppose I like the rhythm more than anything. The lyrics are secondary."

"Uh...huh." He took his gaze away from the phone to look around the empty warehouse. "Where's Addy?"

"She was excited to get started on her enrollment so much that she decided to take a early flight this morning back to Neo York," Peni said. "I will join her over there when my flight leaves this afternoon."

"Oh."

She put her wrench back into the box and closed the drawer.

"So...that happened."

Peni turned back around to face him. "You are referring to what happened between Addy and myself in Professor Granville's office.

"I am."

"It must have made you uncomfortable."

"Peni..."

He looked up as he tried to find the right words to say, Peni still staring at him. It was true that what they did was not something he was accustomed to. He barely had any experience in the romance department (if he counted whatever was happening with Karmi), and seeing Addy and Peni become closer was nice, if also a little...unfamiliar.

"It didn't make me uncomfortable. Just a little..."

"Confused?"

Hiro sighed. "Peni, a lot of things have made me confused over the past year. Becoming a hero, stopping villains, fighting a giant electrically-enhanced lizard thing with your cousin who's a supergenius just like me."

Peni let out a small laugh.

"Seeing you and Addy with each other? That's not confusing. Yeah, to me it's a little weird." Hiro looked up at S.P.I.D.E.R.'s face, the large yellow eyes staring back at him. "But if it makes you happy, who am I to argue with that?"

He felt her hand clutch his forearm. "Thank you for understanding. I don't know what's going to happen between us on that level, or even if it will last, but I want to see where it goes. I hope that others will see it that way."

His eyes were now scanning the area, taking note of the absence of other humans. "Speaking of others, where is the rest of your team?"

"They have been relieved of their duties."

Hiro wheeled back toward her, surprised. "Really? Why?"

"Because I am no longer in need of them."

"Hold on. Does that mean..."

"Yes." Peni pressed at her phone and brought up what looked like a document. Like the CRI in Granville's office, it looked very official. But instead of three signatures at the bottom, there were only two: Peni's and someone else's he couldn't decipher.

"The S.P.I.D.E.R. project has been deemed a success, based off our actions the other night. Thus, as per the terms of the agreement I made with the government, S.P.I.D.E.R. now belongs to me."

"Wow," Hiro said. "Congrats."

"Thank you." She returned her phone back to the home screen. "Because the project had been officially turned over, I have allowed the other members of the team to explore employment elsewhere. I used some of the budget for this project to pay for their travels home."

"Are you keeping the rest?"

"No. The rest..." Now Peni looked up at her robot. "The rest I gave to Dr. Morbius to care for Michael."

Hiro saw her step up to S.P.I.D.E.R., running a finger over one of its legs. "Michael was not as lucky when it came to recovery. Professor Granville informed me that since Michael's tech was hardwired into his body, the damage to his nervous system was much more severe. They are both flying back to Neo York within the next few days for further treatment. The money I gave them will allow them to be comfortable for the time being."

"You didn't have to do that."

"Correct. I did not. But it was the right thing to do. Especially after he told me everything about what happened before with my father." Seeing Hiro's incredulous look, she shrugged her shoulders. "Dr. Morbius told me about the details yesterday. I do not hold any ill will toward him. My parents' death was an accident...as much as I did not want it to be."

"I guess that leaves me with one last question." Hiro gestured to S.P.I.D.E.R. "What are you doing with him?"

Peni's spider hairclip crawled down her arm and rested in her open palm, bringing up the blueprints again. "Part of the schematics detailed a travel-mode for S.P.I.D.E.R. Less bulky, conforms into a smaller space while still keeping the structural integrity. I feel it will be useful when keeping my identity a secret."

"Yeah. Can't exactly go around campus with it like that, can you?"

"This is true."

Hiro saw Peni's face contort into a look of confusion as they both stared up at the robot. "What's up?"

"...He spoke to me."

He raised his eyebrow at her.

"When I pulled Addy out of V.E.N.O.M. on the opposite side of the bay, it had very quickly recovered from the effects of the EMP. It was ready to take the both of us out, but then...S.P.I.D.E.R. saved me."

"That might have been its artificial intelligence kicking in."

"But that is the thing. While I designed my spider here (she looked down at her hand) to have some sort of sentience...there is no A.I. program built into S.P.I.D.E.R. I had always wanted to make one, but the legal hurdles were too much to overcome. And I did not feel like I would even be able to work on that until I was finished with the reconfiguration. And I do not see how I will finish with _that_ before my plane leaves this afternoon."

Hiro turned on the spot and started walking away. "Sounds to me like you need a team."

"Yes, it is rather ironic that I had the others leave. I do not know where I am going to find anyone with the technological know-how to-"

Peni now noticed that he was no longer next to him. She turned to see Hiro's hand on the door, a wide grin on his face.

"Oh...I think I know a few people who can help."

Hiro pushed opened the door, and in strode an exasperated Korean, cracking her knuckles in front of her. "Good lord, Hiro. Monologue much?"

"Sorry. Might have gotten a little carried away."

In walked Wasabi next, casting a glance at the giant robot. "Heard you were looking for people to work on S.P.I.D.E.R.? Count me in. I think we can collectively come up with a few things to help."

"_I agree."_ It took a little bit, but Baymax was able to squeeze his way inside. _"The similarities between our mainframes can be studied further to enhance its capabilities."  
_

"And I brought cookies!" Honey Lemon squealed, patting the basket in her arms.

"And I brought the mouth to put the cookies in!" Fred said, bringing up the rear.

Hiro stepped in front of everyone to look at his cousin. "So, Peni. What do you think?"

Peni smiled at everyone, the grin seemingly infectious. "I think...that there are a lot of things we can get done in the time I have left."

A couple of hours later (and a lot of pointing things out by Fred), the group had almost wrapped up their work. Go Go was up on S.P.I.D.E.R.'s leg, poking around at the rim of the cockpit, a nervous Wasabi eyeing her from within. Honey Lemon was back on the platform with Hiro and Peni, looking over some analytics. Fred had disappeared off somewhere, but they could still hear him. Where he was exactly was anyone's guess.

"OK, so I think we're just about there." Wasabi ran a finger over the control panel. "I moved a couple of your more commonly used functions on your board around so that they're more easily accessible."

"Yup, and your hydraulics are ready to go." Go Go jumped down, wrench in her hand. "Maybe slim the armor a little bit to cut on the air resistance, but otherwise it's great."

Honey Lemon tapped on the four cylinders next to her on the counter. "The testing on your web cartridges with the aqua regia went well; it looks like it's holding. Take it back to Neo York and play around with it a bit. If it keeps up, you won't have to keep those chemicals that make up your web separate any more. You'll be able to have double the amount of fluid in S.P.I.D.E.R."

"And don't forget the most important thing of all!"

Fred jumped out from behind the robot, pointing to the right of Wasabi. "Customizable cup holder. Made to fit all of your fountain drinks of choice from Yaki Taco or Noodle Burger or Pizzazz Pizza or-"

Go Go yanked him off of the top by the collar of his shirt. "Fred! We get it. It holds things."

"Those all sound amazing. I cannot believe all of the progress we have made." Peni took a walk over to her robot and looked up at it. "I think I have everything I need to start making a difference."

"Not...everything."

Peni turned around and saw everyone gathered around Hiro, who was now feeling very nervous. He had planned to give this to her with less of a crowd. Or...no crowd, really.

"_Hiro._"

Under the gentle prodding of Baymax, he stepped forward. Peni saw he was holding some sort of chip in his hand. It looked very similar to what Baymax had, but it was red instead of green, with a very familiar pair of diamond eyes instead of round ones.

"I made this. For you."

Peni's eyes widened. "Hiro. That is an A.I. Chip."

"Yeah. It is."

"...There is no way you made a complete artificial intelligence program in two hours."

Hiro laughed out loud. "You're right. I didn't. I was up all last night working on it with Baymax after you went to bed."

"I do not understand. I did not mention the encounter between V.E.N.O.M. and S.P.I.D.E.R. until today. How did you-"

Her eyes fell onto the white rotund robot and stopped herself.

"_Yes. You are correct,"_ Baymax answered the unasked question. _"When I traveled into S.P.I.D.E.R's mainframe when you were unconscious, I had felt a presence similar to mine. It was...an anomaly. But it was one that I put into my memory banks and told to Hiro after our battle with Michael Morbius."_

Peni looked down at the chip. Something about seeing her robot's face on the top seemed to slow down her brain.

"This is a refurbished healthcare chip. One of Baymax's? Why do you have two healthcare chips?"

Hiro glanced behind him at his friends' faces. "Because I used to have two Baymaxes."

She narrowed her eyes at him, her curiosity piqued.

"It's...a very long and very complicated story. Most of it I still don't understand." Hiro scratched the back of his head. "But to make things short, I found myself one day with a copy of Baymax's body. Or what I thought was a copy."

Hiro's demeanor softened as he thought back. "One day, the copy suddenly started degrading. It was awful. I barely was able to get the chips out of his body before it disintegrated completely. Thankfully, there was no one else around but me at the time. So ever since then, I've been keeping it for safekeeping. But...I think it would be better in your hands than mine."

"Yeah, we also learned that instead of a sword, some people walk about with a giant key and whack people over the-"

"Fred." Go Go cut in. "Not now."

He ignored him, instead stretching his arms out. "So here it is. The Superhero Program for Identification, Determination, Execution, and Revision."

Peni raised her eyebrow at him, the lettering not lost on her.

"Hey, _you_ try coming up with an acronym that works at two in the morning."

She chuckled softly at him, gingerly taking the chip in her hands. She took the walk over to her robot and very carefully placed it into the front slot, right near the seat. She stepped back as the program started up.

It was almost like Baymax was depowering from his Overdrive mode. The grey parts of S.P.I.D.E.R's stomach were covered by the red chestpiece slotting together. The red on its arms ran up them entirely, only leaving a little bit of its fingers on the end. It was the same for the legs as well, a single toe showing on its foot rather than the three prongs from before. The bulky shoulderpads rounded into two red orbs, with only a hint of the yellow showing underneath the small grates.

The last thing to change was the head. The red crept down and around the eyes until they were just tiny orbs, just like Baymax's. It sunk a little bit into the torso, but still protruded out of the top.

"I..may have had Baymax in mind when I wrote the conversion program."

"I can see that."

The transformation was done. S.P.I.D.E.R. looked like a completely different robot, one that was cute and cuddly and definitely not secretly part of a superhero duo or anything. Its head rotated around, getting familiar to its surroundings. After a second, it focused right on Peni. It blinked its eyes once, and then said its first sentence.

"**Hello**."

Baymax waved his hand at it. "_Hello._"

"...Riveting conversation we're having here."

Now it was Fred's turn to hit Go Go on the shoulder. He would regret that in an hour when she would throw him down a manhole, but let's focus on now.

S.P.I.D.E.R. took a baby step forward. In his compact form, he was somewhere between Baymax and Peni in height, his arms and legs more stubby than before.

"He still retains his mobility. The armor's conformable, but doesn't hinder anything."

Peni stared into the face of her robot, now nervous. "Hello."

It blinked again. "**Hello. My name is Peter. What is your name?**"

Hiro saw Peni suddenly clam up. She brought her hand to her face, covering her mouth. Her legs started shaking so bad that he thought she was going to keel over. She creaked her fingers apart and whispered back a reply.

"Peni."

"**Hello, Peni. I am here to help you serve and protect. I am also here to protect you and your friends. Are there any threats present?"  
**

"No, there are not."

"**Very well. I shall proceed to go into sleep mode. Password?"  
**

Now was the part that Hiro was worried about. Maybe this was being a little overkill, but he hoped that Peni knew what to say.

"...Sunflower."

"**Password accepted. Sleep mode enabled."**

He closed his eyes, his armor dimming slightly to signify his lowered power output. But Peni's attention was no longer on her new-look robot. It was on her cousin.

The two geniuses stared at each other for a long minute. The peanut gallery behind him seemed a little confused.

"Um, I don't want to interrupt this moment," Wasabi said. "But I think I'm missing something here."

Peni slowly lowered her hand. Her demeanor hadn't changed, and now her eyes were welling up with tears. And Hiro knew exactly why.

"Peter...was my father's name."

Her eyes went down to the floor, darting back and forth between the cracks.

"And when I was young...I had a lot of problems sleeping through the night. It probably was my brain overclocking itself. My mother would come in and joke that I needed to be put on sleep mode."

Her arms crossed over her body.

"She would hold me close to her and calm me down enough where I could sleep again. And they would always call me...their little Sunflower."

There wasn't a single dry eye in the entire warehouse now. Not even Go Go was exempt from it as she wiped her face away with her wrist. Hiro, collecting himself, walked up to the girl and carefully put his hand on her shoulder.

"I talked to Aunt May last night after you went to bed. She told me a little bit about your parents. I didn't tell her everything that happened, but I think she kind of knows anyway."

Peni's hand wrapped around his wrist, but didn't respond.

"Peni, I never got to know my parents. The only person that really reminded me of them is Tadashi, and losing him was the worst thing in the world. But I have Baymax, and his chip is something that will always be a part of him. And I figured that with this..."

Hiro steeled his nerves and let out a slow breath.

"They'll always be a part of you as well. They can see all of the great things you'll do in Neo York...and they'll be so proud of you."

He had more he wanted to say, but he never got a chance to get it out. Peni had lurched forward, wrapped her arms around his waist, and buried her head into his shoulder.

The two just stood there, Hiro's shoulder getting stained by her tears. But he wasn't going to move.

He felt the others walk over, Wasabi coming into his line of sight. He also felt the weight of Honey Lemon's hand on the top of his head, ruffling his hair.

"Thank you. Thank you, everyone." Peni leaned her head back to look at the group. "I have learned so much while I have been here. Of what I am capable of. Of myself. Of all of you." She stood up straight and shook her head to gather her thoughts. "I will take everything I have acquired and be the best hero I can be."

"And you have us if you ever need it," Wasabi said.

"Yes, know that I have a mentor here will be very helpful."

Peni stepped back to take Hiro in full. "I believe there is a honorific that they use in animation that refers to someone who mentors an underclassman in their studies. It would be very appropriate for me to bestow that upon you, Hiro."

He didn't need Fred (who was excitedly dancing on his toes to his right) to know what she was going to say. "Peni, that's really not necessary."

"Oh, it definitely is." Go Go knew where it was going too. "And I totally want to hear her say it."

Peni looked at all of them as she brought her hands to the front, palms together. Very slowly, she bent down at the waist, bowing toward her cousin.

"I bestow upon you the title of _senpai_."

Hiro's cheeks started to burn as the entire group behind him, including Baymax, mirrored her movement. Left with no choice, he bowed as well, hoping that the redness would stop spreading.

"Well." Peni brought out her phone. "I suppose I should be getting ready for my return trip to Neo York. There will be a lot of things to do once I get back."

"I guess that just leaves us with one last thing to do."

She saw that Hiro had his cell out as well, and the others were standing next to him: Go Go and Fred on his right, and Honey Lemon and Wasabi on his left, all of their phones facing up. Hiro motioned for her to do it was well, and she brought it up, completing the make-shift circle.

"Peni, you helped up save the city. You don't have to aspire to be a hero, or _work_ to be a hero. You already are one."

Hiro's screen filled up with a single red number, stretched all the way to the border.

"And even though you'll be in Neo York, know that you'll always have us to help you if the time comes."

Now it was Go Go and Honey Lemon's phones that had it.

"So before you leave, we want to give you something. A badge of honor of sorts."

Fred and Wasabi's phones were next.

"A secure line of communication. Something that only team members have."

Peni stared at Hiro. "Do you mean..."

"Yeah. I do. Peni..."

Her phone now shared the same symbol as the others: a giant, bright red number six.

"Welcome to Big Hero 6."

* * *

_One week later..._

Hiro found himself sitting in the booth at the Lucky Cat Cafe, dwelling over a well-earned breakfast from Aunt Cass. The patrols had been going well over the past few days, so much so that not even Chief Cruz yelling at him through a megaphone was enough to dampen his spirits.

He had been getting some updates from Aunt Cass about Peni. Getting S.P.I.D.E.R. (or Peter, as he was now called) adjusted to their house was a challenge, as Aunt May had brought them home from the airport that night and didn't know what to do with him. But she did know how much he meant to her, so they were able to make some accommodations for him.

Evidently, Peni must have told her about Hiro and how well they had gotten along, because not even twenty-four hours later, a package had arrived for him. The return address was from some confectionery in the city, containing a gargantuan amount of gummy bears of every size and flavor...which Aunt Cass immediately confiscated at dinner.

Not to worry. She was never good at hiding things anyway. He'd pilfer it slowly when the time was right. But right now, he had two people he was talking to on his laptop.

"_My goodness, Genius Boy, I don't want to see your breakfast in your mouth."_

One was twelve hours ahead and in her pajamas.

"_I concur."_

The other was three hours ahead and fidgeting with her mini-spider.

Hiro shook his head at the two girls on his screen. "This is what I get for having you two together."

That's right. Karmi and Peni were chatting with Hiro. And it was already going about as well as he expected.

As he had promised, Hiro had called Karmi a day after Peni had left to go back to the East Coast. Naturally, he had to leave a lot of the details out with the battle against M.O.R.B.I.U.S., but she had hung on his every word, looking as excited as can be. It was well into the night before he finished, so much so that Aunt Cass had to shoo him off to bed. But before that, he told her that he would let them speak the next time she was available. So, that morning, after everyone had left to go to the base, Hiro had stayed behind to call Peni and Karmi during breakfast.

"_So...can **I **__call him senpai too?"  
_

"No."

"_Awww." _Karmi twirled her hair in her finger. _"You never let me have any fun."_

Peni giggled in the other window. It was amazing to see the transformation that had happened to her. She was excitable, cheerful, and even tried making a few jokes. They were on the level of Fred, though, so they didn't fly very far. There was still the wide-eyed glare that she would give sometimes, but that was a rare occurrence.

It didn't take long for Karmi and Peni to get along with each other, which Hiro was not sure whether that was a good thing for him or not. In the short chat, they had talked about biotechnology, robots, traveling, and Hiro.

A _lot_ of Hiro.

Like...an uncomfortable amount.

"_I'm so excited for you, Peni! You're going to do great at NYIT!"_ Karmi squealed. _"I can't believe that I actually know a superhero in real life! This is so awesome!"_

Peni cast a sideways glance at Hiro, who sheepishly grinned at her in response. _"It has been a very busy week. I have already managed to catch a few robbers, save a bus full of passengers, and gain the ire of someone at the city's newspaper." _She poked at her screen and brought up a website article. The title on top was giant and bold: _**SPIDER-MECH: A MONSTER OR A MESSIAH?**_

The video started auto-playing, and an older man was sitting behind a desk, his grey hair and mustache waving around as he waved his arms around him. _"Spider-Mech is taking the jobs of the good men and women of the police force! Enough of this automation and robotics! We don't need a stinking robot swinging around the city doing things that the everyday person can do! It needs-"_

Peni mercifully cut off the video, and Hiro couldn't help but chuckle. "Wow, it took Big Hero 6 almost a year for the police to get on their case. It only took you a week."

"_I try not to pay attention to him." _Peni sighed. _"I have met many members of the police and they have all been thankful for my services. I do not care about this man's opinion."_

A sudden yell came from the kitchen. The few customers that were still in the cafe looked up from their food to stare inquisitively at the entrance. It must have gone through his laptop's speakers as well, because both Karmi and Peni recoiled.

"_What was that?"_

Hiro shook his head, amused. "That's the sound of Doreen working off her punishment. I should probably go check up on her." He got up from his seat, but not before pointing a finger at his screen. "And _don't_ talk about me while I'm gone."

As he stepped away, Karmi turned her attention to Peni, who was now stuffing things into her backpack. _"So, what're you up to after this?"  
_

"_I will be going to NYIT for a proper introductory tour with Professor Deol,"_ Peni said, her spider returning to her hair. _"I feel that it would probably be best to keep Peter here until I get acclimated to the campus. That, and Aunt May is obsessed with waxing him for some reason. She says I get him too dirty."_

Karmi laughed. _"The life of a superhero, I guess."_

"_I suppose."  
_

A few seconds passed by in the relative silence. There weren't any more yells from the kitchen, so at least that was a start.

"_Peni, I need to apologize to you."_

Hiro's cousin looked up from her packing, a spare notepad in her hand. _"What for?"  
_

Karmi shuffled in her seat nervously. _"I overreacted when Hiro told me about you. I assumed certain information and I went behind his back instead of just talking to him directly. I thought you were his...girlfriend. And I-"_

"_Karmi."_

She stopped mid-sentence to look at Peni. She was giving her a wide grin as her head was leaning over the keyboard, a hand up facing her.

"_There is no need to apologize. I was the one who did not make myself clear as to my identity. Any other person in your situation would have done the exact same thing. I hold no grudge against you."_

Karmi smiled back at her. _"Thanks."_

"_There is something else that I have learned from seeing both you and Hiro together."  
_

Peni patted down an errant tuft of her hair.

"_Even if I was not Hiro's cousin...I never had a chance."_

Karmi's cheeks went pink. _"Peni, it's not like that."  
_

"_This is intriguing. That is exactly what he had said about you when I inquired about it. But from observation alone, I can see it now." _Peni leaned forward. _"He is yours. And you are his. There is no denying that. It is merely the science of compatibility, and the two of you are very compatible."_

Her chat partner had said nothing, her face getting even redder.

"_I must go to campus now. Let Hiro know that I had to go. Perhaps we will talk at some point later."_

"_OK,"_ Karmi squeaked out.

"_Oh, and by the way..."_

She wasn't sure she could take any more, but the biotech major looked up to see Peni staring at her.

"_Even if I was not Hiro's cousin...he was not the one that I was attracted to."_

Peni's window closed, leaving Karmi alone in the chat room. It was probably for the best, because she wasn't sure if her face was going to start combusting at any moment. Unluckily, that was the exact moment that Hiro decided to come back.

"Wow, I probably have flour in places I didn't even know I had." He patted his head, a small cloud of white coming off of it. "Maybe she's better off serving the food and not making it." He looked down to see the chat program. "Oh, Peni left. What happened?"

"_She had to leave."  
_

"Are you OK? Your face is red."

"_I'm fine. Shut up."_

Hiro looked around to see if anyone was close. Taking a shot, he decided to poke the bear that was Karmi. "Soooo. Is there anything you want to tell me?"

Karmi glared at him. Their last contact had been very one-sided, with Hiro doing most of the talking. It had seemed like she wanted to say something, but Aunt Cass' interjection had cut it off. He had a pretty good idea what it was, given the whole thing with Doreen, but now he was giving her the floor.

Maybe just turn down the evil grin a little bit, Hiro.

She rolled her eyes at him. _"I'm sorry."_

"For?"

"_...For sending Doreen behind your back."  
_

"And?"

"_...And assuming that Peni was your girlfriend."_

Hiro nodded. "I accept your apology."

"_To be ever so slightly fair to me, though..."_

Uh oh.

"_If you had just...**told** me that she was your cousin, none of this would have happened. So if you really think about it..." _Now the evil grin was on her face. _"This is all your fault."_

"What!?" Hiro shouted, his voice cracking. "Are you actually serious?"

"_I'm totally serious. I don't joke about things like this."  
_

The two stared at each other, incredulous looks on their faces...and then they busted out laughing at the same time.

"Unbelievable." Hiro finished chuckling and wiped a tear away. "We are so messed up."

"_You more than me, but yes."_

"Are you guys making up? Are you guys making out!?"

A sudden blur came up to Hiro's left, and the new person leaned in so Karmi could see her. Her short reddish-brown hair had patches of flour on it, and her clothes even more so. She fanned her neck as she tried to regain her breath. "Karmi! I've been baking! And I'm not burning the place down."

"_That's...good, Doreen."_

"But enough about me! How are you lovebirds doing? Now that I'm done with my punishment, I can bother you guys some-"

"Doreen."

Hiro looked up to see Aunt Cass crossing her arms in front of her, a spare whisk in her hand. It didn't look like she was mad; on the contrary, she seemed particularly pleased with herself. She motioned Doreen over as she pulled a small piece of paper out of her apron pocket. "Be a dear for me and grab some more supplies from the store. I just need a couple of things."

"And then I'll be done?"

"Yes. And then you'll be done."

She took the paper out of her hands, excitedly walking toward the door. Aunt Cass only winked in Hiro's direction before walking back to the kitchen. He wasn't sure what to make of that as he watched Doreen take two steps on the sidewalk and look at the paper.

And the paper slowly unfolded about twenty times, the list now reaching all the way to the ground.

Doreen stared at the new paper for a long moment...and then reeled her head back, yelling a single word up into the atmosphere.

"_Ummm. What is she yelling outside?"_

"Let's...just say that it begins with the sixth letter of the alphabet and leave it at that." Hiro turned back around to face the computer. "She'll be busy for a while."

"_That's probably for the best. Get her to expend all of her energy, and she'll bend to anyone's will. That's what Chef Gramercy did when I was at the restaurant."_

Hiro was suddenly reminded of their conversation back at SFIT, which seemed like years ago. He wasn't really eager to ask that question again, especially after the response he got before. Maybe he could talk to her later.

"_You know...in retrospect, I don't know why I got so worked up about it."_

"Huh?" he said, confused.

"_About Peni. About you possibly being with her." _Karmi looked down at her hands, the blush creeping back in. "_I mean...you're more than welcome to date whoever you want. We're not in a relationship."_

Hiro's eyes were out the window, absentmindedly thinking about everything that happened over the past couple of weeks. He was barely paying attention to any of his thoughts. So maybe he shouldn't have been surprised when he let one of those thoughts slip out of his mouth.

"Maybe we should be."

And then his brain turned back on.

"Ummm..."

His neck ran deep red as he looked down at Karmi, expecting her expression to match his. But instead, what he got was a small wry smile, her brown eyes staring back at him.

"Sorry, I didn't-"

"_Genius Boy."_

Karmi's smile grew as she held up her finger to cut him off. _"When I get back-"_

"You mean _when_ you get back."

She tilted her head at him, and it was only then that she had realized what she had said.

"_**When** _I get back..."

Her face got closer, cheeks blazing, her lips almost filling up the screen.

"_You and I...have a **lot** of things to talk about."_

The corners of her mouth curled up, and with that the call ended, leaving Hiro flummoxed and staring at the screen. It was a good thing that Aunt Cass was still in the kitchen, or else she would have to take a fire extinguisher to his face.

"Yeah."

Hiro looked down at his phone, the last message he had been sent by here still up on the screen: a single, almost comically pink heart, beating to the rhythm of the one in his chest.

"We do."

* * *

**AUTHOR'S NOTE: **So, there is a lot to unpack from this story, and I guess it kind of starts with-

Oh wait. Hang on.

...What on Earth is that girl doing?

* * *

"_What on Earth are you doing? It sounds like you're building a robot."  
_

"I'm not! Don't worry about it!"

Doreen was in her apartment, now free of soot and burns. Through some sheer dumb luck, the fire that had broken out in her complex had been confined to the upper levels. Her upstairs neighbors weren't so lucky; Matthew did indeed have to move to a friend's flat because of construction, and Ms. Crawford and her daughter had made their way to her parent's house just outside town. But before they left, the woman had told a long tale about how a giant squirrel had saved her daughter's life. Ashley, sleeping in her mother's arms, was still clutching her squirrel plushie.

And it got Doreen to thinking.

And we all know what happens when she starts thinking.

"_You're totally building a robot, aren't you?"  
_

The wildlife volunteer adjusted her phone on the couch. "No. I'm working on something for Yggdrasil. It's totally boring and not worth you clamoring about it."

Karmi rubbed her eyes. _"Doreen, I just woke up. I don't have time for this."_

"Maybe you should go talk to your boy then."

The silence coming over the line let her know that she had achieved victory. She wiped some grease off of her face, throwing the wrench down to the ground. "It's a surprise, so I can't tell you anyway. Maybe when you get back over here, I can show you. But you'll have to sign a gag order before then."

"_Huh?"_

Doreen glanced at the window. "Sorry, Karmi. I gotta go. Gotta wake up early in the morning to go test this out. Plus I'm sore from Hiro's aunt working me over all day today. I'll talk to you later?"

"_If you don't tease me anymore, sure."  
_

"Aww, what fun would that be?"

Karmi shook her head in mock disdain. _"Goodbye, Doreen."  
_

She hung up and walked over to the window to open it. "Have a nice walk, Tippy-Toe?"

The squirrel squeaked a little bit, jumping over to his tree.

"Yeah, it's nice for things to finally get back to normal in this city."

Tippy-Toe pointed behind her with a tiny paw.

"This is _totally_ normal. Just your normal, average, everyday..."

She gestured to the floor, where there were a pair of metal rounded boots standing next to the coffee table, shining from the light on the ceiling. Laying next to it was a pair of leather gloves, long nails protruding from the fingers. Her aviator jacket was on the cushion, a makeshift hood on top with a pair of faux squirrel ears attached to the material.

"...Superhero suit."

The squirrel shook its head at her.

"Yes! Really! Tippy-Toe, I've made up my mind. After everything that I've seen with Big Hero 6 and that monster, I know that I can do this!"

Doreen stood dramatically, a finger pointing in the air.

"I'm going to be a superhero!"

One last squeak came from behind her.

"Oh yeah. Probably shouldn't yell that out loud."

And then a tiny slap of the forehead.

* * *

**THE REAL AUTHOR'S NOTE: **OK, are we good?

*looks around wildly*

Are we all good?

Good.

I wouldn't want to start an author's note without being interrupted again.

What's going to happen next? A segment where Peni is at NYIT and meets a bunch of new people that are eerily similar to Hiro's friends except that they all share a common theme with Peni?

Aw crap. I did it again, didn't I?

...Son of a-

* * *

"Built in 1929, this particular building has a 'smart' auditorium, capable of housing almost twelve hundred students at the same time. It's outfitted with the latest and greatest technology that all of the students here can enjoy-"

"Professor?"

The Indian headmaster looked down at his companion. "Yes?"

"I do not mean to offend you." Peni adjusted the backpack on her back. "But this is all incredibly..."

"Boring?"

"...Pedestrian."

Professor Deol laughed. "Yes, I am sure it is. But our campus has a very rich history, and I would like my students to know it as well."

The two were taking a stroll around the campus of the Neo York Institute of Technology, the clouds hanging overhead to partially block out the sun. She had arrived slightly late due to taking care of a mugging a few blocks away, but her professor didn't seem to mind. It was almost as if he was expecting it.

"I suppose you prefer the rigors of fighting crime and being a superhero instead."

Peni stopped walking, her eyes wide. "I am not sure what you are referencing, Professor."

He chuckled. "Ms. Parker, when you and Ms. Brock came to campus, I was also afforded the information that Professor Granville at SFIT was. I am aware of who you are and what you do."

"Oh."

"Do not worry, Ms. Parker." Deol folded his arms behind his back. "Your secret is safe with me. I find it hard to imagine that people would even believe that the new superhero in town is a fourteen-year-old genius in a mech suit anyway."

The two continued walking through the courtyard, the tall buildings towering above them. A random student would wave hello to the dean, who would amicably wave back. Peni was still trying to take everything in, even though she had already been here before. Her officially being a student now changed things.

"How is Ms. Brock, by the way?"

"Still recovering," Peni mumbled. "Due to her physical therapy, she will not be able to attend classes until later."

"A shame. But I am sure she will be joining us soon. It is good to know that the problems that the two of you have faced have made you stronger. Not only for yourselves, but for each other as well. A team like yours..."

He trailed off, spotting a pigeon on one of the roofs of the financial aid building. Peni waited for him to say something else, but was only greeted by silence. "Professor?"

Deol rubbed his chin in thought. "Peni, would you like to assist me on a problem of mine?"

"Ummm...I would love to."

"Very well. Please follow me."

They went off to the right, heading toward on the building with communal labs in it. Deol opened the large doors and stepped through, Peni close behind. "I have a group of students that have a lab here, located on the highest floor. They are all very bright in their own special way, but they are very...scattered. Perhaps seeing someone like yourself would unify them a little better, would you agree?"

Peni stepped into the elevator along with Deol. "I am not sure what I would be able to offer to them. I don't have a lot of scholarly experience."

"This is true, but you have _life_ experience. And sometimes that is all the difference."

They rode it up a few floors, and the ding signified their arrival. The two stepped out and took a short walk down the hallway to one of the automatic doors. He bent down to enter the passcode on the keypad.

"Ms. Parker, let me introduce to you-"

The door whooshed open to show a very cluttered lab, projects and papers on every single table. Everywhere she looked, there was a new thing to see, from the section of wall with multi-colored paint on it to a dressed mannequin that looked like it has some sort of headset on it. It looked like a smaller version of the lab that Hiro and his friends used back at SFIT...only there weren't any people in this one.

"Hmm." Professor Deol turned his head to take a gander around. "Well, that was rather anticlimactic. It is almost as if they knew I was coming..." He gestured to Peni to step inside. "Go ahead and wait here while I search around for them. They never seem to be far away. I will return momentarily."

She took a small step forward as the door closed behind her. On a second scan, there did seem to be some order to the chaos: the papers only seemed to be confined to a few tables in the corner. There were four distinct sections to the room, the paint covering almost the entirety of the left wall.

The quiet was too much. She wished that S.P.I.D.E.R. was with her now; she had left him in sleep mode in Deol's office as not to arouse any suspicion. The last thing she needed was someone to put two and two-

Wait. One moment. Was it just her, or did it look like the mannequin moved?

"Is he gone yet?"

"Gah!" Peni whirled around on the spot, waving her hands in some sort of martial art fashion.

"Heh. Relax."

The sound of feet hitting the ground came from behind Peni, and she turned to see a young woman standing there. The edge of her red infinity scarf fell down to her neck as she bent her back away from her. She was wearing a black bodysuit underneath her white shirt and black jean shorts, white stripes running down the sides. Peni could see very thin red lines running all around her shirt, seemingly in a random pattern.

"So you must be the new kid."

"How do you know that?"

"Word travels fast around campus." The new girl ran the scarf through her fingers, her short black hair moving with it. "That, and you were here a few weeks ago. I guess you passed the initiation."

Peni pointed to the clothing around her neck, which was now slightly glowing. "What is that? Did that let you know we were coming?"

"You're a quick study. It's an early detection system, handily woven into my material. Call it a...sixth sense, if you want." A few more colors shined through the scarf. "Comes in handy when you don't want to be disturbed from your work."

"This is all of your work?" Peni asked, motioning to the room.

"Oh no, there are others here. Which reminds me..." The girl turned her waist and yelled at the painted wall. "Miles! You can come out now. She's cool."

A section of the wall shimmered, and a young boy leaned forward, almost falling over. He pulled the black hood of his sweatshirt off, the poof of black hair returning to its rightful spot. He weaved his fingers through it, the bikers gloves on his hands. "Thank goodness! I didn't know how long I could hold my breath for."

"You were _not_ holding your breath, Miles," the girl said.

"OK, you got me." He tapped the wall with a knuckle, and the paint changed color from white to red. "What color are you in the mood for, Cin?"

"Whatever color gets you to shut up."

Peni walked over to the boy, amazed. "Is that...electroluminescent paint?"

"Close. Instead of the static helping with the paint, it charges the paint molecules. _And_ creates the illusion of invisibility. Here, look." The boy named Miles pulled a plank of wood onto a nearby table. It had four brush strokes on it, all of different colors. "Put your phone on one of these."

Peni pulled her cell out and placed it on the closest one. Almost immediately, her phone (which had been at half power) began to charge up.

"Wow. That is something."

"Yup. Now just imagine if you could just paint a building and not have to worry about running cables through the walls. No mess and giant construction costs whatsoever."

"Unless the paint gets too charged, and then it would probably remove itself from the wall."

"Yeah...that's something I've come across." Miles pointed at her and winked. "But nothing I can't handle. What's your name?"

"Miles." The girl slapped him in the shoulder. "Stop flirting with the new students. She's too young for you, either way. Weren't you paying attention to Deol when he was talking about it two weeks ago?"

"No."

"Of course, you weren't."

The door to the lab slid open, and a new girl stepped through, holding a container of drinks. Her short, spiky brown hair went in every direction as she looked around to see where her labmates were. She had black pants and a white tanktop on, red vertical stripes going down it. Her long sleeve, fingerless gloves were also red, as was the backpack on her body. She pulled up the wide-lens sunglasses off her eyes as she got closer. "Hey guys! I got the coffee!"

"Thank God." The first girl swiped one of the cups out of the container and took a long swig. "I was just about to conk out. We have a visitor, by the way."

"Oh! Hi, there!" She slung her free arm out to shake Peni's hand. "Nice to meet you! You'll have to excuse the mess; I've been working on a _buuuunch_ of stuff for companies around the city." She pointed behind her to the table with the paperwork. "Did you know that sixty percent of industries in Neo York aren't energy efficient? Imagine that! Do you drink coffee?"

She said and did all of this in approximately three seconds. It was so fast that Peni felt her eyes starting to swirl.

"Oh, I did the speed thing again, didn't I? I should really learn how to slow down. Cindy tells me that all the time."

"You should _really_ learn how to stop mainlining caffeine," the black-haired girl said from her chair.

"Have you met Joey yet? Or is he still in his other dimension?"

Peni was confused. "I was not aware that a fourth person was here."

The coffee girl pointed to the mannequin. Now she was even more perplexed. "What are you-"

"Yup, he's gone. I got him." Cindy got up and walked to it, smacking her middle finger on the top of the headset. "Hey! Joey! Come back to this world!"

"I'm here, I'm here!"

To Peni's utter surprise, the mannequin was _not_ a mannequin. It was a normal human being, his brown hair very thin on top of his head. As he took the headset off, there were many red veins running through his eyes, like he had the headset on for far too long. He looked up at Peni as he shook his head to get the cobwebs out. "Oh man! That was a fun session. I almost broke my record."

"That's not exactly something to be proud of," Miles joked.

"Hey, I lasted longer than you guys could!"

Cindy rolled her eyes at him. "Phrasing, Joey."

"Ahh, there you are."

The group of five turned to see Professor Deol returning to the lab. He strode up to them, plucking a coffee out of the container. He took a slow sip of it and smiled. "I am very glad that they were able to get my order right this time. Thank you very much."

"No problem, Professor!" the girl said.

The distinct sound of coughing came out of Cindy's mouth. Peni thought she heard a word she wouldn't repeat out loud. "Teacher's pet" probably would have been too long. Regardless, the dean ignored it.

"Now that we're all here, Ms. Parker, let me introduce to you to your fellow students." Deol nodded to the black-haired girl next to her. "Our Infrastructure Management major hailing from Korea, Ms. Cynthia Moon."

"Cindy."

"...Ms. _Cynthia_ Moon."

"Ugh."

"Our Electrical Engineer from Brooklyn, Mr. Miles Morales."

"Yo."

"Our Energy Technologist and completer of a million projects, Ms. Anya Corazon."

She waved her hand at Peni, it being full with a coffee cup.

"And then our Virtual Reality...Enthusiast, for lack of a better term...Mr. Joseph Wade."

"Your _future_ Virtural Reality graduate, you mean."

Deol looked at Peni's confused face and smiled. "NYIT does not currently have a Virtual Reality major. Mr. Wade had fought long and hard to make that happen, and I have his full support. Now, if you will all excuse me, I have some things to take care of. Please feel free to get yourself acquainted with everyone...and do try not to blow up the lab this time."

He walked out of the door, and as soon as it closed, Peni turned to Cindy. "You blew up this lab?"

"He's exaggerating immensely. It was a _small_ explosion."

"Those two words run counter to each other."

"Don't worry, Peni," Anya said, throwing her cup into a nearby trash can. "The only reason why Cindy's so mad at him is because she likes him."

"What did you say!?"

"I mean, we can all see it, Cin," Miles smirked. "You get so hot and bothered when he's around."

"Just like how you are with Gwen?"

"Hey!" Apparently this was a thing he was a little touchy about. "You can't mention her! She's not even here. She's touring with her band!"

"Wonder what she would say if I told her you were hitting on other girls?"

"You stop this, right now."

Cindy laughed at him, but someone else was still on her mind, because she crossed her arms in a huff. "Professor Jameson didn't go out of his way to check up on me. That's all I'm saying."

"He _is_ only six years older than you." Now Joey was in on the action. "You should ask him out."

She pulled her scarf up over her mouth.

"Cindy, I can still see your blush."

She pushed it up further, the only thing visible on her face the glare she was giving Anya.

"Oh, what time is it?" She looked down at her wrist, and a hardlight construct began to form around her wrist, forming into a gauntlet. "Oh man, my paper on Symkaria is due in an hour. I better print it out!" She extended her hand out to her desk, and the printer turned on and started to spit out papers.

"What is that?" Peni said, mystified.

"Hardlight construct builder. Connects to things remotely. And it connects to my bracelet," she added, holding up her wrist to show it to Peni.

"And why is it blue?"

"To match my tattoo, silly!" She pulled down her arm sleeve a tiny bit to show two small triangles, shining blue just like the construct. "Just got it last week. Everybody's got to show support for Spider-Mech!"

"He's so amazing!" Miles shouted. "I wish we knew who he was. We could go fight crime with him or something!"

"Us?" Joey fidgeted with the strap to his headset. "We're probably too _boring_ for someone like him."

"I do not think you are boring."

All four faces turned to look at Peni. Realizing what she had said, she backtracked. "I mean...all of you have your own quirks and eccentricities, but I would not categorize you as uninteresting. You are...unique. In your own way."

Silence.

"...Where is this girl from again?"

"She's the new student, Joey," Cindy said, her mouth out in the open again. "Robotics major, right? And also a huge fan of Spider-Mech, from what I can tell."

Peni raised her eyebrow at her, and all she did back was point to the side of her head. She realized that was where her hairclip was. "Oh! This is one of my earliest robots. Here." She pressed her fingers to the clip, and it came alive again, crawling down her finger until resting on her wrist.

"Woah." Miles leaned down to look at it. "That is killer."

"Thank you. I made it when I was very young. When...I didn't fit in anywhere."

The room went quiet, and for a moment, Peni thought she had said something wrong. The other four were sharing a look between them, but it wasn't long before their invisible conversation had ended.

Cindy was the first to act, uncurling the infinity scarf around her neck to extend it onto her outstretched arm. She showed her covered palm to Peni, who saw deep within the material, there was a black glowing light. It was two circles, very close to each other, with eight lines bending and extending out. It almost looked like a-

Wait.

Miles moved next to her, bringing his fists together. On the top of his gloves were red blotches, a large circles on each of his knuckles, and four rounded lines going toward his wrists.

"I..."

Anya very carefully pulled down her arm sleeve a bit further. Her tattoo wasn't just two small triangles; there were eight of them, all surrounding an almost complete oval, and all shining the same bright blue.

Joey coughed to get her attention, and as her gaze met his, he put the headset back over his eyes. He pointed to the very top of the device as it restarted, the data streams coming together in the end to form-

Peni had to take a moment. For the longest time, before she went to San Fransokyo, she never had any friends. Never anyone to relate to. After what happened with Big Hero 6, though, she felt that she had people she could relate to. She has friends.

And now she had more.

"Peni."

Cindy stared at the teen genius as her robot looked around at all of its brethren, just as amazed as its owner was.

"Something tells me...you're going to fit in just fine."

_THE END_

* * *

**NO, SERIOUSLY. THIS IS THE AUTHOR'S NOTE: **Ho. Ly. Crap.

My God.

I cannot believe that this story is finally over.

Not that I'm sad or anything. It's mostly because I know that a lot of people have spent the better part of two months waiting for the ending of this story.

And there's a lot that I can talk about in this note. I could talk about Peni's backstory, or at least my interpretation of it. I could talk about the hinting at Doreen's future as a superhero, or drawing inspiration from _Into the Spider-Verse _for S.P.I.D.E.R.'s redesign. I could talk about the way I found a way around still making KHIII canon (for now). I could talk about the Hiro/Karmi, and the teasing for that eventual reunion.

...Although I'm hoping the show does that for me. XP

I could also talk about the introduction to Peni's new group of friends, and maybe perhaps talk about what the future lies for Peni, Cindy, Miles, Anya, and Joey (whom I'm sure everyone knows who they are by now, minus the last one).

But I'm not. Mostly because you've read through almost 15k words, and I don't want to take up more of your time.

I will, however, say...thank you. Thank you for hanging in there through this story and through its delays. Thank you for all of the kudos, comments, and likes that you've put onto this story. Thank you for embracing Peni Parker as she is now fully a reserve member of Big Hero 6.

And mostly thank you for putting up with me as I got this story done.

This story didn't get as much attention as previous ones, which is obviously a little disappointing, but it's completely understandable based off of the myriad of things happening in my life. I hope that you did enjoy the story as much as I did writing it. And I hope you enjoy this last chapter.

And now...I'm going to go take a long nap.

Read and review, if you like. Until next time, everyone.


End file.
